A Day in the Life
by Yoshimitsu's Disciple
Summary: Join your favorite Soul Calibur characters on wacky adventures in which the reader will find out more about how each character's story is related to each other. Twilight Zone fans will like. And please leave reviews.
1. Xianghua's Story

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Namco, Soul Calibur, or any of the characters. This is just a fan fiction.

**A Day in the Life**

Chapter 1: Xianghua's Story

"Deserts suck," Xianghua said under her breath. She had been traveling through the sandy, deserted desert for quite some time now, but had forgotten why she was going this way. She figured it was either to find and destroy Soul Edge, or to go get some macaroni at the local supermarket. However, she had passed the supermarket an hour ago, so most likely she was looking for Soul Edge, unless she was daydreaming too much and didn't realize she had gone past it.

"Deserts suck," she repeated, forgetting that she had already mentioned deserts and how they sucked.

Finally, she noticed a shadow come over her, and looked up to see a relatively large house shielding her from the boiling heat of the sun.

"Deserts… suck?"

She stared at it for five seconds, not moving, then started running as fast as she could towards the savior house, chanting, "Deserts suck! Deserts suck! Deserts suck!"

When she finally made it to the doorstep, she dropped her sword and commenced rapidly ringing the doorbell. She could hear footsteps from within, but they seemed to move away from the door she was at. She waited a minute, but still no response. She rang the doorbell a few more times. Before anyone came to the door, she noticed the paperboy drop dead as he rode his bicycle past the house. She was about to run over to help him, but the door finally swung open, hitting her on the back of her head.

She rubbed the bruise on her skull and turned around to meet the face of a man with a wooden arm wearing a mask at the door, as well as a man with bandages covering his face. Xianghua's jaw dropped slightly at the sight of these two strange looking folks.

The masked man spoke, "Ah, a guest! How may we be of service to thee?"

Xianghua responded, "Deserts su- I mean, I really need water, please. Please." Again, she didn't realize she had just repeated herself.

The man smiled behind his white mask. "Ah, of course! We have not received any visitors here in the past!" He reached out his mechanical right arm and pulled Xianghua inside by the shoulder. "Voldo!" he said to the bandaged man. "Give this young lady a glass of water, please." Voldo bowed slightly and ran down the hallway, straight into a wall. Xianghua and the masked man both flinched as he fell onto his back then got up and ran into the kitchen.

"Please excuse him. He is blind. And mute. And possibly diseased in more than one way," the man said. He pointed to a seemingly comfortable chair against a white painted wall. "Come, sit here. My name is Yoshimitsu, and I shalt do what I am able to do in order to make you as comfortable as possible."

Voldo came running clumsily back down the hall, gripping a glass of water with his right hand, and flailing his left arm at the same time. Yoshimitsu snatched the glass out of his hand as he dashed past him and collided with yet another wall. Xianghua took it out of his hand and chugged it as fast as she could.

When she had finished, she dropped the glass on the carpet. "Actually, could you tell me where the bathroom is?" Xianghua asked, almost out of breath.

"Certainly. 'Tis down that hall and across from the kitchen."

Xianghua zoomed down the hall and into the room across from the kitchen, turned on the sink, and stuck her mouth underneath the faucet, letting the water fall down her throat.

Yoshimitsu stood in the doorway, hands at his side. "My, thou art thirsty indeed. Please, tell me thy story, Xianghua."

Xianghua pulled her head out of the sink, confused. "How'd you know my name?" Yoshimitsu pointed to the nametag sticking to her shirt. "When did I get that?" she asked herself. Yoshimitsu guided her back to the chair she had originally sat in, which was currently occupied by Voldo. Yoshimitsu pushed him out of the seat and guided him over to his wooden rocking chair. He then sat down in the chair across from Xianghua's and crossed his legs in the classic psychiatrist pose.

Xianghua started to explain. "Well, I've been trekking through the desert for days, _hours _even, before I found your house in the middle of nowhere."

Yoshimitsu scratched his head. "Desert? There is no desert nearby."

"Yes there is, we're right in the middle of one."

"Nay, we residest in a city here." Yoshimitsu pointed out the window as Voldo pulled the curtains away from view to reveal a bustling city with tall buildings and dozens of people.

Xianghua raised an eyebrow, and then realized, "Oh, I remember now. I forgot to take my pills this morning." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pillbox, opened the box labeled Saturday, and shook the contents into her mouth. "Ah, now I can see. And now I remember that I _was_ just going to the supermarket to get some macaroni. Wow, I must be miles from my house." Xianghua thought for a second. "Oh, and you might want to know that there's a dead paperboy in your front yard."

Yoshimitsu glided across the carpet and opened the curtains to see the corpse of the paperboy, with a few civilians standing around him, conversing. "Ah, well, he was a snot anyway."

"Uh, okay." Xianghua seemed baffled at his nonchalant reaction. Most people she knew would be horrified, she'd seen a few old people faint in front of her in the past.

"Well, thou may stayest here if thou wisheth," Yoshimitsu said. "I shall giveth thee a tour of the house." He led Xianghua down the hall, and through a few doors to the back porch, while Voldo trailed behind, navigating through the dark maze. "Here we have our hot tub, in which thou mayest relax if thou wisheth."

Xianghua's eyes widened at the sight before she was taken back inside and down a staircase. "Here we have our indoor in-ground swimming pool, in which thou mayest swim and exercise if thou wisheth."

The sides of her mouth steadily curved upward before she was taken back upstairs into the living room. "Here we have our plasma-screen television, which thou mayest view at leisure if thou wisheth."

A brilliant smile crept across her face. "How do you have a TV? It hasn't even been invented yet!"

Yoshimitsu scratched his head. "Well, let's just say I know a balding old man from the future with crazy, pointy hair and a son that he killed but resurrected himself by selling his soul to the devil, then swearing revenge on his father."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"'Tis just a metaphor."

"Did I mention that you're my best friend in the world?" Xianghua said to Yoshimitsu as she flung herself onto the sofa, placing her feet on top of the coffee table in front of it, turning the TV on with the remote, then holding onto the sides of the sofa as the incredibly loud sounds of explosions from the surround sound speakers blew her backwards, deeper into her seat. She managed to turn her head to the side to discover that neither Yoshimitsu nor Voldo still remained behind the couch, and the window behind where they were once standing was open.

_Whoops. I guess the sound blew them out the window._ Xianghua reached the remote control to turn down the volume. She sighed. It wasn't nearly as exciting with the volume decreased. She turned it back up and sat for hours with her fingers tightly clenched around the armrests of the sofa.

Voldo, seemingly immune to the effects of the television volume, returned to the living room, holding out a tall glass of iced tea for her. Xianghua attempted to grab it from him but was unable to release the armrests from the prison of her fingers. She knew she couldn't reach it anyway, as Voldo was facing the wrong way.

"Just put it on the table!" she screamed as loud as she possibly could. Voldo put his hand to his ear. "I said the table!" Voldo nodded, placing the glass on the floor and tripping over the coffee table on the way back.

Hours later, after forcing herself to leave the living room to transfer herself over to the dining room for the largest, most filling and most delicious meal she had consumed since she had gotten a membership at Astaroth's fitness center for the morbidly obese, she received a relaxing massage from Voldo's smooth, ironically wrinkle-free hands.

"This is the best day of my life," she said to herself. "The only thing that could ruin this is if..."

A sudden, sentence-interrupting crash met everyone's ears as the door swung open.

"…Kilik?"

Kilik ran in with a new, unreadable tattoo on his chest, wearing only a towel around his waist, holding a piece of paper in the air.

"What's going on here!" he screamed with fury, pulling his towel up higher.

Xianghua hesitated. "I don't know. You tell me. What happened to your clothes?"

"I mean this!" Kilik shouted, shaking the piece of paper. "Here, let me read it to you. I'm sure you'll find it _familiar!" _He held the paper in front of his face.

"Dear Xianghua,

Thanks for the great time last weekend. You're a totally awesome gal. Let's do it again sometime, as long as it fits my schedule, because you know how busy I am all the time. You can pick the restaurant again; you have great taste, but I already told you that at the movie. Remember to call me. My number's 555-6294.

With loads of love,

Maxi

P.S. Kilik's a dumbass."

Kilik's hand clenched into a fist and threw the letter into the ground. Xianghua hesitated, mouth agape, eyes swaying to the left. After a moment, she looked back up at Kilik.

"Who's Maxi?"

What happened to Kilik's clothes? Where did the mysterious tattoo come from? What happened to the paperboy? Why does Voldo serve Yoshimitsu now? What sorts of mental diseases does Voldo have? Stay tuned to find out.

Next Chapter: Kilik's Story.


	2. Kilik's Story

I forgot to mention that this isn't meant to be historically accurate, so don't yell at me or anything. Also, I am _not_ against gays or fangirls. In fact, I support them, so please don't yell at me for that either.

Chapter 2: Kilik's Story 

Kilik was infected with a common disease. A hangover. He sat up in his bed, clutching his head with both hands, closing his eyes tight, trying to recall what had happened the previous night. He knew he went to the bar, and most likely got drunk, but what had happened when he left?

Then he made a startling discovery. There was a heart-shaped tattoo on his chest, which he couldn't read, as the words were written in Korean, and he was only wearing a towel under the blanket. Plus, he wasn't in a familiar room.

_What the hell did I do last night?_

"Hey there, hunk," a voice entered Kilik's ears. He didn't like the tone of the voice. He turned his head to the site of the voice to find a Korean man wearing a headband, standing in the doorway, smiling at him. "You slept late."

_What the HELL did I do last night?_

Kilik stared at the man with his jaw sagging. "What happened to my clothes?" he asked suspiciously.

"Oh, I threw them out. They were all ripped and dirty."

_WHAT the HELL did I do last night?_

Kilik's lip quivered in fear. "What happened last night?"

"Oh, nothing really. You were so tired you fell asleep on my bed, so I just went to sleep on the sofa." The Korean man giggled, backing out of the room.

Kilik gave a sigh of relief. Nothing had happened. Still, what was he doing here? He thought a bit more. "And at least there's no horde of fangirls waiting outside."

"Oh, yes there is," the man poked his head back in. He pointed to the window across from the foot of the bed. Kilik tugged on the towel as he stood up and forced himself to walk to the window. Outside were hundreds upon hundreds of squealing fangirls holding signs with phrases such as, 'Kilik, will you marry me?' or 'I was meant for Kilik,' who became significantly louder upon seeing his terrified face in the window. Kilik jerked his head away and slammed the window shut.

Panicking, he turned to the Korean man. "How do I get out of here!"

The man's eyes rolled around in his head for a second, before coming back. He looked around, and asked in a different voice, "May I help you?"

Kilik pushed the man aside and ran down a stairway to exit through the back door. As he dashed through the house, unfortunately, he noticed the fangirls staring through the windows and running around the sides of the structure, following him through the house. There was no escaping them.

He had to think of a plan. He walked to the front of the house and stood in the window so everyone would gather in the front, then, with all of the strength in his legs, bolted through the back door, kicking it down off of its hinges. The horde immediately realized it and pursued after Kilik, turning out to be faster runners than him. With his staff, Kilik pole-vaulted over the fence in the backyard, landing on his back on the sharp grass, cutting into his spine. Needless to say, Kilik had never heard of such sharp grass.

Kilik tiptoed through the forest behind the fence in order to avoid cutting the fragile soles of his bare feet. He turned his head, only to discover the horror of the horde blasting through the chain link fence, sending fragments of metal in all directions. Nets were launched at him, but Kilik was fortunately agile enough to dodge them all before they had a chance to even skim the surface of his skin. Once again, there was no escaping them.

It was then that Kilik faced a dilemma. He hadn't the slightest idea of where he was, and therefore, didn't know where he was heading. Home was the first place he would want to go, but obviously, wasn't able to find the right path to that location. So…

He finally burst through the leaves and out of the forest into a city full of people in the streets, several of which staring at him. Seconds later, the civilians all fled in terror once they witnessed the trees in the woods tumbling to the ground one by one as the horde exploded out and spilled into the streets. The struggle was still not over.

Then, for an unknown reason, the fangirls shifted down another road that led away from Kilik. Kilik sat down against a brick wall to catch his breath.

"I can't live with the fact that I cheated on Xianghua with that guy, even if I was drunk, it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I can't live any longer." Kilik closed his eyes and held his staff to his throat and with a swift motion, pulled forward. He opened his eyes with the realization that he just failed his attempted suicide. "Why am I still alive?" He looked down at his weapon. "Hey, wait, there aren't any sharp edges to this thing, it's just circular! This thing isn't even lethal at all! How the hell am I supposed to kill Nightmare with this piece of crap? Sure, I guess I can poke him to death, but…"

His soliloquy was interrupted when a boy of about ten or eleven tripped over Kilik's foot, which Kilik hadn't noticed protruded into the sidewalk. The boy pushed himself off the sandy ground, returned his cap to the top of his head and looked up at Kilik. "Pardon, monsieur, I was not looking where I was going. I just need to deliver this letter, c'est tres important."

Kilik stood up to talk to the French boy. "No, it was my fault, I shouldn't have stuck my foot out like that. So, why's it so important?"

"I don't know. My uncle just said, 'deliver this to Xianghua, quickly,' so I did."

Kilik's eyes widened. "Xianghua? A Chinese woman?"

"Si, senor."

The boy's change in accent baffled Kilik a bit, but he decided to put it aside. "I know her! I can get it to her!"

"Oh, arigato! I heard she was in the house at the top of that hill over there, if you can get it to her." He pointed to a large two-story house at the top of a long hill.

"Okay, thank you, I'll get it to her as quickly as I can. Bye."

"Ciao!"

Kilik wondered who would be sending a letter to Xianghua, so once the boy was out of sight, he tore the seal of the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper and began reading.

It read:

Dear Xianghua,

Thanks for the great time last weekend. You're a totally awesome gal. Let's do it again sometime, as long as it fits my schedule, because you know how busy I am all the time. You can pick the restaurant again; you have great taste, but I already told you that at the movie. Remember to call me. My number's 555-6294.

With loads of love,

Maxi

P.S. Kilik's a dumbass.

Kilik's once-gentle eyes now boiled with rage. His teeth grinded against each other and his breathing became louder. Sweat dripped off his forehead as his scalp started to give off steam. His fist clenched tight enough to crush the spine of the largest warrior.

"That bastard! That's just cold-hearted betrayal! He will die the next time I see him! He will _suffer!_"

Kilik bounded up the hill to the house to confront his so-called girlfriend. He kicked down the front door and entered a room where he discovered Xianghua receiving a massage from a creepy guy with bandages dressing his face and with another guy in a chair next to the massage table, wearing a mask and reading a newspaper.

Xianghua's jaw dropped when she tilted her head up to look at him. "…Kilik?"

"What's going on here!" Kilik screamed with fury.

Xianghua looked at his towel, then back up at him. "I don't know. You tell me. What happened to your clothes?"

"I mean this!" Kilik shouted, holding the letter higher, shaking it vigorously. "Here, let me read it to you. I'm sure you'll find it _familiar!" _He held the paper in front of his face and read it aloud, exactly how he had read it originally.

When he had finished, he squeezed the letter and thrust it down at the ground, with more steam coming off the back of his head.

Xianghua stared at Kilik, then moved her eyes to the right, then back and asked, "Who's Maxi?"

Next chapter: Yoshimitsu's story


	3. Yoshimitsu's Story

Another Disclaimer: I don't own The War at Home, Friends, or Tommy. It's only a fic

**Chapter 3: Yoshimitsu's Story**

Both eyes were fixed on the television set. The big-screen, plasma television set. Yoshimitsu was the first in the world to own a television, but he didn't care very much, since he was also the first person to have a fully functional mechanical arm, and the first person to fly without wings or superhuman powers. He had no facial expression under his mask while watching.

"'_Fiends' was filmed in front of a live audience_."

"'Ey, Handler, how you doin?" Laugh track.

"Chronica, have you seen my Velociraptor fossil?"

"Here it is, Doss."

"That's not a fossil, that's a real Velociraptor!" Laugh track.

Yoshimitsu watched as the sitcom paleontologist character was torn to shreds by the clearly computer-generated dinosaur on TV while wondering how this ridiculous sitcom had been running for nearly ten years.

His new assistant, Voldo, walked through the living room into the kitchen to pour himself a morning glass of orange juice. Yoshimitsu was shocked that even his pajamas were unbelievably tight and therefore frightening. He shivered and reached for the remote to change the channel.

"'_The War at Home' was not filmed in front of a live audience_."

Yoshimitsu watched as the father character grounded the teenage girl character for sneaking out of the house, which Yoshimitsu predicted she would do again later in the episode and once again be caught, which he found out was exactly what happened, since he had seen this plot device in several dozen other failed sitcoms, all the while wondering how this ridiculous sitcom had been running for nearly ten episodes. The laugh tracks started to annoy Yoshimitsu, as they appeared after every remark that was clearly too realistic to be funny in real life.

Voldo walked back in with his glass of juice, which he spilled upon walking blindly into a wall. He adjusted the bandages over his eyes and mouth, rubbed his nose that had made contact with the wall first, and commenced to wipe the juice off the floor with a paper towel.

The week before, Yoshimitsu had met Voldo in a destined battle at Ostrheinsburg Castle. Yoshimitsu ended as the victor and afterwards, Voldo looked around, as if hearing a voice. He nodded to his possibly imaginary friend and attempted to explain to Yoshimitsu what had happened. Being mute, he tried playing charades, but that game had been banned from that area, after a copyright issue with the Soul Edge demon Charade took the creators of the game to court, with the jury siding with the plaintiff. So, Voldo wrote a note to Yoshimitsu on a piece of scrap paper that read:

"My dead master Vercci has told me that I am too much of a loser to be allowed to continue being his servant, and has asked me to find someone else to serve. He says he found someone else to replace me. You seem like a cool guy. Can I serve you?"

So Voldo had been living in Yoshimitsu's house as a servant, a decision made mostly on sympathy that Voldo had nowhere else to go. Yoshimitsu didn't actually need someone living with him, though he hardly ever spoke with anyone else besides the other Manjitou members, being feared as "the guy in the creepy house at the top of the creepy hill that's always got creepy music playing and lightning striking behind it." This was a coincidence because on this day, Yoshimitsu finally received a visitor.

However, they were not used to visitors at all, so their reaction to the doorbell was to rush upstairs to the rifle closet and to take their places at the windows above the door with their assembled sniper rifles. When they put their eyes to the scopes, Yoshimitsu noticed the visitor was merely a young Chinese woman, mostly harmless.

"Voldo, hold thy fire! 'Tis only a girl." It was too late. Voldo had fired, but of course, being blind, he missed by several yards and the bullet hit the paperboy in the chest, knocking him off his bicycle. Voldo turned to Yoshimitsu and shrugged his shoulders. No one would know who the boy's killer was, as long as the silencers were still at the tips of the guns.

They rushed down the stairs to greet the woman and invite her inside. Her name was Xianghua, and she had come for water after wandering through a desert, which she later discovered to be a hallucination. Yoshimitsu and Voldo did whatever it took to make her comfortable, even letting her watch TV.

Xianghua turned on the television, being thrown back by the sound deeper into the sofa. Yoshimitsu and Voldo, however, had built up immunity to such loud sound after being exposed to it for a large amount of time. Yoshimitsu whispered to Voldo, "Dost thou want to go play some Time Crisis?" Voldo nodded and the two simultaneously backed into the secret elevator that led down into the secret arcade in the secret basement. "Loser must bring our guest an iced tea."

Voldo lost, being blind. Did anyone not see that coming? He never won, but still had his hopes, ever since he had been inspired by the movie "Tommy."

The inhabitants of the mansion still treated their guest like a queen. They cooked her a delicious five-course meal that she barely managed to finish, leaving only the rice on the plate. If Yoshimitsu's Japanese heritage had taught him anything, it was that it was a disgrace not to finish every grain of rice, and if his mother had taught him anything, it was that those who didn't finish their rice should have the food forcefully shoved down their throat. He resisted doing so, since Xianghua was not Japanese, and his mother was slightly mentally ill.

Then, all hell broke loose when Voldo gave Xianghua her after-dinner massage. The door flung open and in barged a brown haired man wearing only a towel. "…Kilik?" Xianghua muttered.

"What's going on here!" the man, Kilik screamed.

Xianghua looked at his towel, then back up at him. "I don't know. You tell me. What happened to your clothes?"

"I mean this!" Kilik shouted, holding a piece of paper, shaking it vigorously. "Here, let me read it to you. I'm sure you'll find it _familiar!" _He held the paper in front of his face and read it aloud:

"Dear Xianghua,

Thanks for the great time last weekend. You're a totally awesome gal. Let's do it again sometime, as long as it fits my schedule, because you know how busy I am all the time. You can pick the restaurant again; you have great taste, but I already told you that at the movie. Remember to call me. My number's 555-6294.

With loads of love,

Maxi

P.S. Kilik's a dumbass."

Kilik threw the letter into the ground, boiling with rage. Xianghua hesitated, then asked, "Who's Maxi?"

Yoshimitsu looked at the two and decided to let them settle their business as they wanted. He and Voldo tiptoed into the room next door and pressed their ears against the cold, painted wall to eavesdrop on the conversation.

"So what's wrong with me?" they heard Kilik ask. "Is it because I don't look like a celebrity like that bastard Maxi? Well, news flash, not everyone looks like Elvis!"

"I'm… gonna leave now."

"Oh no, you don't! Not without a fight!" The sounds of a staff swinging met the ears of the two in the opposite room, then the sound of a sword twirling. "Bring it! This rod will be your doom! Wait, that didn't sound right…"

The next sounds consisted only of two weapons repeatedly clashing over and over, then the sound of a towel being cut in half. "Hey!" Kilik screamed after a devilish laugh came from the other warrior. Yoshimitsu was, unfortunately, familiar with the sounds of towels being cut, ever since high school. Although he was never a victim of the infamous Manji High School locker room towel-slicer, he was constantly haunted by the victims' screams of humiliation and the feminine giggles coming from the girls' locker room next to it. Yoshimitsu attempted to suppress the memories with the thought of him being in a third fighting game.

Then, another sound met Yoshimitsu's ears, that had nothing to do with the battle. It was the sound of bandages being ripped. He rotated his head to face Voldo, who was tearing the bandages off his face. He looked around, smiling, and spoke, "Master, I can see! I can talk! It's a miracle! There truly is a God!" Voldo opened the door and ran out to where the fight was.

"No, Voldo, he doth not currently wear any-"

Voldo turned to face the dueling pair. "Friends! I can…" The bright smile instantly faded away from Voldo's wrinkled face.

Yoshimitsu finished his sentence, "…clothes."

Voldo screamed, "AAAHHH! AAAHHH! I want to be blind again! I want to be blind again!" He covered his eyes, ran back into the room and attempted to paste the bandages back over his face, though it was made difficult by the tears seeping out of his newly functional eyes.

"Sorry," came Kilik's voice.

"Prithee, go into Voldo's room and wear some of his attire," Yoshimitsu suggested from behind the wall.

"Why his? I'm sure as hell not going to fit in any of _his_ outfits."

"Well, you see, I am slightly obsessive compulsive. I cannot allow my clothes to come in contact with another body. Please understand," Yoshimitsu explained, pulling out a bottle of cleaning fluid and spraying it on the wall.

Kilik returned wearing a red suit with no back and large, puffy pants, with his shoulders slouching. "I miss my towel," he muttered.

"Well, I now suggest that the two of thee both giveth each other thy apologies for thy actions."

Xianghua sighed. "I'm sorry I went out with Maxi."

Kilik sighed in the same fashion. "I'm sorry I attacked you and cheated on you with a dude."

"Huh?"

"And with that other girl at the bar last Friday."

"Wait, wh…"

A loud, ear-shattering alarm blared, and everyone but Yoshimitsu shot their hands up to cover their ears. He knew what it meant. "Voldo! Someone hath tried to break into the secret arc-…" He turned his eyes to his two visitors, then back. "Model. Our secret life-size model of Noah's ark." Keeping an eye on the other two, Yoshimitsu and Voldo rushed to the gun closet again and descended into the arcade.

All the lights were out, and most of the games had been unplugged by someone unfamiliar to the house. The two split up to travel through the maze of six-foot tall computers to locate the trespasser. The difficulty of the mission was heightened by the fact that there was such little light, and the burglar's movements seemed to be quite swift. By the time someone had realized they heard motion, it had already stopped. Finally, a shot was fired.

"Master! I did it! I finally shot something I was supposed to shoot!"

Yoshimitsu ran to where Voldo had drawn blood from the intruder. Voldo bent down and dipped his right index finger in the miniature puddle of blood on the floor, looked at it, and touched it with his tongue. "It's human blood. Or at least, _mostly_ human."

Another sound arrived to Yoshimitsu and Voldo's ears. It was a window opening. They silently walked over to the two-by-one foot window in the very corner of the large room, which gave off most of what light they had. Bloody handprints were smeared on the glass, and there were footprints outside that led to and from the window, which explained how the intruder entered, and that he or she had left after being shot. Yoshimitsu reached up to the ceiling and closed and locked the window.

"The battle has ended! Let us now watch Arnold Schwarzenegger battle various villains on the plasma screen!" Yoshimitsu gathered everyone into the living room, turned on the TV, and changed to his free movie channel that came with his digital cable deal.

"I'll get some popcorn," Voldo announced, walking into the kitchen.

Kilik twisted on the couch, "Could I get some extra butter?"

Xianghua twisted on the couch, "And could I get some ketchup on the side?"

An arrow whizzed through the window and stuck itself into a hole it had constructed in the wall adjacent to the television, just as Arnold shot his ninth terrorist, stabbed his third ninja, and blew up his fourth building. Xianghua stood up, pulled it out, and looked at it. There was no message attached, or anything that could hint at where it had come from, so she retreated to the window and hurled it back in the general direction from which it had come. She returned to the sofa once again to continue viewing extreme violence with Yoshimitsu and Kilik. None of them truly noticed that Voldo never came back out of the kitchen.

Next Chapter: Voldo's story.

Oh, and Kilik is wearing Voldo's 2p costume from SC2, if you're wondering.


	4. Voldo's Story

Yet another disclaimer: I don't own the New York Yankees or Abercrombie & Fitch.

**Chapter 4: Voldo's Story**

Having the ability to see after years upon years of lacking it was a blessing to Voldo. He looked around at the kitchen walls, at the colors, which he never knew existed. He could never comprehend what sight even was, even after having it explained to him in detail by people like Vercci. He enjoyed viewing the scenery such as the counter tops, cabinets, the refrigerator and its contents, etc. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a bag of uncooked popcorn and placed it in the microwave, setting the time to two minutes. Once that was done, he walked over to the window, not nearly as clumsily and drunk like he used to. Outside he could finally see nature. Green leaves, brown trees, red blood on the ground.

Of course, he didn't realize that was blood, since he didn't know what the color of blood was. He imagined it was the dew left on the grass. He still didn't find anything unusual about the blood-soaked hand reaching through the open window and yanking him outside either.

Voldo landed on the soft grass outside the kitchen window; more concerned that the popcorn was burning than the fact that he was being attacked. He turned to face his opponent to see what looked like a lizardman, but… not. It seemed mostly humanoid, but its movements and noises most resembled a lizardman's. He looked at the window to the secret basement/arcade and noticed that the bloody handprint fit his opponent's hand, which was equally blood-soaked. He was battling against the intruder.

It held what looked like a stick with a blade at the tip, very primitive and suitable for a lizardman. Voldo stared in terror, as he had never actually seen a creature like this. "Manas! Ayus! Where are you!" he called, only realizing that his weapons were not alive until his opponent kicked him in the stomach and he saw his two katars sitting on the ground. He jumped up and ran over to them. "Why won't you listen to me? I am your master!" The blades remained motionless. "Fine, I'll just have to pick you up myself," he yelled, angrily and frowning.

He swiped at the odd lizardman, missing by several feet. He swiped again, with the same result. "Gah! I can't do this! I was so much better when I was blind!" The creature slashed at Voldo's chest, but only managed to cut a piece of tight leather. Voldo looked down at himself, finally realizing just how wrong his outfits were.

He pulled the piece of leather up to his face, wrapped it around his head and tied it to make a blindfold. He was now able to fight decently. He tackled his enemy and struck the ground with Manas and Ayus, just barely missing the creature's head. He spun to trip it, but it jumped over his foot.

As Voldo pushed himself off the ground, the creature hit him in the chest with the blunt end of the weapon. Voldo wheezed as a response.

The animal stopped and looked around. In a human, feminine voice, it spoke, "Wow, this isn't good." It scratched its head and walked away, hardly looking at Voldo.

Voldo peered down again at his disgusting clothes. He needed new apparel as quickly as possible.

He ran gracefully down to the mall, staring at it in awe, as he had never seen it before, obviously. He peeked his head into all the shops, looking for one that had normal clothes for sale. Most of them only sold clothes that he wore normally, and those were stores that were female-oriented. He walked through the rest of the mall, continuing to look through every store, still finding mostly females. Even the male-oriented stores were filled with women. He finally found a male clothing store, which happened to be empty except for the cashier. Voldo walked up to him and asked, "What do most masculine people wear these days?"

The cashier pushed his long, blonde hair back, which seemed to have been messed earlier, and not combed or brushed. He looked up, with tired eyes, "We only have one set of clothes here. It's what pretty much every-," he sarcastically held up two fingers with each hand, " 'cool' person wears now." He pointed to the single rack in the store, which held several of the same baggy jeans, orange shirt, white sneakers, plaid boxers, gold necklace, and New York baseball cap.

"But the Yankees suck!" Voldo exclaimed to the cashier. But, he had no choice, and had to wear this to regain his masculinity. After getting dressed and paying the cashier, he carried his clothes outside, threw them into the dumpster, lit a match, and burned it to the ground. "Burn in Hell, Abercrombie & Fitch Tight Leather Division!" He walked home, struggling to keep his new pants up without revealing the boxers, wondering how all the cool people could stand it.

He walked through the front door to the house, and said to the others in the living room, "Check it out, yo! I'm a cool person now! No more tight costumes! Werd Life!"

Kilik looked down at the clothing he was wearing. "Why am I wearing this, then?"

Voldo sat between Yoshimitsu and Kilik on the sofa. After watching Arnold Schwarzenegger blow up three more cruise ships, five more airplanes, and six more terrorists in less than five minutes, Xianghua turned to him and asked, "So where's our popcorn?"

All three stared at Voldo as he walked into the kitchen, discovering pieces of microwave oven and popcorn strewn throughout the area. Voldo knew he would have to clean it up himself, and doing so would make him miss the scene in which Arnold gets his bazooka and sheds a few more kiloliters of blood.

Sorry for this being shorter than the other chapters.

**Next Chapter: Mina's Story**


	5. Mina's Story

And yet another disclaimer: I don't own The Twilight Zone or it's characters, Pepto-Bismol, or Operation.

**Chapter 5: Mina's Story**

Seung Mina woke up in an uncomfortable position. Her back hurt, her neck hurt, and her head hurt. Having only two hands, she could only rub two of the sores at one time, leaving one alone. She then noticed something odd. There was an oversized leather collar around her neck. She tore it off with her left hand and looked at it. It read, "Fido." Mina lifted an eyebrow and then sat up, clutching her lower spine with her right hand. She tossed it aside, but discovered something else. She was in some sort of cage, between ten and twenty feet wide, with a tree in the center. She turned her aching head to the left, seeing several people staring in, some through cameras.

The flash from the cameras gave Mina even more of a headache. She bent her neck forward with her head in both her hands and moaned. She slowly stood up erect and noticed the people outside the cage gasped and/or backed up. She lifted an eyebrow again. Once her eyesight became clearer, she looked around and saw several more cages, most of them housing animals, a few with humans that looked like animals. Those humans were sticking their arms out of their cages and attempting to convince any passers-by that they were humans and not animals. She came to the conclusion that she was in a zoo.

She spoke the same language as the people outside her cage, so she decided to talk with them and explain that she was human. "Uh, hey guys, listen…"

"Ahh! It's trying to talk!" someone cried. A young boy buried his face in his mother's dress.

Mina bit her lip. She backed up a few feet and then tried again to negotiate. "Let's try this again. I'm…"

The crowd screamed again, and someone threw a small piece of bread into the cage. Mina looked down at it, then back up to the spectators in confusion. She scratched her head. Maybe they don't speak the same language as her, or if they think she's an animal, perhaps she should use reverse psychology. "Umm… Rar, roar?"

The visitors screamed at least twice as loud. "It's even more terrifying than before!" Most of the parents guided their children away from the exhibit. Someone threw a whole loaf of bread through the cage, hitting Mina in the shin hard. Mina's plan obviously backfired, badly.

She decided to abandon the mission of communicating with the zoo-goers and now concentrate on escaping. The bars were actually moderately far apart from each other, and it wouldn't be too difficult for Mina to fit through them. She stuck her left foot through the side of the cage with ease, then her left arm, then her head. As she tried to fit the rest of her body through, she heard shrieks coming from the women and children in the crowd, men stumbling over one another in attempts to flee, and coughs coming from an old man.

Mina blacked out.

The next thing she knew, she woke up standing over a wrinkled bald man wearing a blindfold, about to thrust her zanbatou through his chest. She turned her head and found herself in an unfamiliar setting. Was she doing this while she blacked out? "Wow, this isn't good." Mina scratched her head and walked around the house she was near.

Mina was more nervous than she had been in a very long time. What if she hurt someone? She was about to kill that skinny, creepy, bald man, wasn't she? Plus, her shoulder hurt, making her wonder even more about what happened. She rubbed it with her right hand, transferring her zanbatou to her left hand, only to find that it hurt more when she touched it. And that it was bleeding. She bent her neck to the left and moved her eyes the same way. She dropped her weapon in horror. Not only was her shoulder bleeding, but it was a whole bullet wound. She had been shot while she was asleep! _Please let it have been a blank, _she thought.

She decided on another mission, which was to search for a doctor. Her other mission was to find out where she was, but that mystery was solved quickly when she found a sign that read, "You are now entering the Twilight Zone." Her wound got to the point where it hurt more than that time when a six-year-old Yunsung tried to play 'Operation' on her while she was sleeping, only to discover that the sides of her organs didn't buzz when his tweezers touched them.

She finally made it to a doctor's office. She knocked on the door with the tip of her weapon, only to be responded to with "Go away!" A water balloon fell out of the window above her and landed at her feet with an explosion of a sticky pink substance that wasn't water. She hopped off the stairwell and stuck her tongue out in disgust.

Then, a man with extremely thick glasses and a moustache poked his head out of the door. He looked down at Mina. "Oh, I'm terribly, terribly sorry, I thought you were a bounty hunter coming for my pet lobster. I see you are wounded. Please come in." He opened the door wide for Mina as she walked up the stairs, suspicious. "My name is Doctor Henry Beemis," he stated, adjusting his glasses and reading the Korean writing on her sash.

Mina looked at him, still suspicious. "Umm… What are you looking at?"

The doctor looked up, adjusting his glasses. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, you see, I like to read. A lot."

A voice from upstairs shouted, "You're a reader, Beemis!"

Dr. Beemis' teeth chattered and he adjusted his glasses. "Ah, anyway, right this way." He led Mina into a room where another man was sitting on the doctor's bench, pressing an icepack to his head.

"Hwang?" Mina said upon the sight of him. "What happened to you?"

Hwang looked up at her. "Oh, Mina. Uh, long story. Can't tell you now. Probably can't tell you anytime for that matter." Dr. Beemis yanked Hwang off the table, causing him to land on his back, then let Mina sit in his place.

Mina looked around at the office. There was no writing anywhere in the room except for a poster that read in bold letters: **Remember, Beemis. No reading while treating the patients!** Dr. Beemis apparently couldn't stop reading that poster while taking the bullet out of Mina's shoulder. "Are you supposed to be reading that?" Mina asked him.

The doctor didn't answer for a few seconds. "What? Oh, no I'm not. I'm terribly sorry." As he continued to treat her, he ranted on about his story of how he arrived in that town from his parallel universe. "Well, after my glasses shattered, I had nothing else to do but to wander the planet, searching for a place to live. After I accidentally dropped Tabasco from Texas on my wasabi from Japan, since I had no glasses, I created a solution hotter than anything else on the planet, so hot that it burned a whole through my own universe. I jumped in and…" He started reading the poster again. Mina snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. "Oh, I jumped in, and floated through several different universes, one of which, I recognized from one of my books, Great Expectations. I met this wonderful character named Pip, and he… Oh, I'm sure you don't want to hear about him. Well, I eventually…" He started to read the letters on Mina's sash again. Mina folded it to block the letters. "Oh, sorry. I found this universe and liked it so much that I decided to stay here and become a doctor, since being a banker totally sucked." He finished tying the bandage on Mina's shoulder and adjusted his glasses. "There you go, you're all set, you just need to pay me."

"Hold on, there's something else I wanted to ask. I blacked out a couple of times lately. Do you have any idea what might cause that?"

Dr. Beemis thought and adjusted his glasses. "I think I may know."

Mina blacked out.

She woke up lying on the doctor's table, seeing Dr. Beemis clutching a hammer used to check reflexes. "That must be what's causing it. You probably keep getting hit with hammers. That's what causes the blackouts-… Oh my goodness! A fire!" The doctor adjusted his glasses and ran outside with a fire extinguisher and poured water over a Japanese man wearing armor, who was running around in circles with his back ablaze. A woman holding a chainsaw ran up to them once the fire was out and dragged the man away by his shirt, barely noticing that he was burnt.

Dr. Beemis walked back in and placed the fire extinguisher back in its place. "Doc, I have to disagree with you on that," Mina said. "I don't have any bruises on my head besides the one you just gave me, so I don't think it's likely that that's the cause."

Dr. Beemis sighed, adjusted his glasses, and thought. "Well, maybe…"

Mina blacked out.

She woke up sprawled over the front steps of the doctor's office, with more sticky pink liquid on her back, and yet another bruise on her skull. She rolled over, falling over the edge of the steps. She sat up in more pain than she had in the morning.

"I'm a doctor! You don't question a doctor!" Dr. Beemis yelled out the window. "Oh, and I'm terribly sorry for the Pepto-Bismol. That was my boss upstairs." He closed the window.

"That's the last time I fall asleep in the Twilight Zone," Mina grumbled, rubbing her back.

Rod Serling, wearing his suit, stepped in front of her. "Miss Seung Mina. Constantly becoming unconscious due to reasons unknown. Reasons that cannot be found, even in… The Twilight Zone."

Next Chapter: Hwang's Story


	6. Hwang's Story

**Chapter 6: Hwang's Story**

"How do I get out of here?" Hwang woke up from a strange sleep that he couldn't describe. It was an unusual feeling, something he had never felt before. It felt like he was sleepwalking, but he wasn't dreaming, and it seemed like he awoke only an instant after having dinner with Mina and Yunsung the previous night. And he was standing upright when he woke up. He blinked and moved his eyes around. He found himself in an unfamiliar house, one that he had never seen before in his life. The walls were painted red, a color that Hwang would never think of using for his house. Plus, there was a frantic brown-haired man standing in front of him with a towel around his waist.

He began to get worried himself. He hadn't a clue who this person was, and whose house this was. He assumed it wasn't the brown-haired man's, since he had just asked how to get out of there. Still, this man might have information about what happened to him. "May I help you?" Hwang asked.

The man only responded by running past him and pushing him aside into one of the ugly red walls. Apparently, he was in a hurry. Hwang walked over to the window in the bedroom he was standing in and lifted the curtains. Outside were at least a thousand screaming fangirls, all of them rushing around the sides of the house. Once they disappeared from view, he saw the towel-clad man run out of the house and pole-vault over the fence in the backyard, only to be followed by the fangirls. He closed the curtain, sighing in relief that it wasn't him they were after. However, upon opening the window again, he saw that about half of the fangirls remained, holding up signs reading things like, 'Hwang is hot' or 'I want to be Hwang's girlfriend.' Just his luck.

The front door opened downstairs. The owner of the house had arrived. So as not to be mistaken as a burglar, Hwang jumped into the bathroom and hid under the sink in the cabinet. He pulled his legs toward his chest so he was in the fetal position and fit perfectly. The light turned on in the bathroom and he could hear the deep voice of a man sighing. Hwang could see more clearly and noticed a towel next to him with the word "Zasalamel" in cursive writing stitched onto the cloth. He looked up to see a pipe on the verge of breaking, being coated in rust.

The sink turned on, and he heard an electric shaver turn on as well. The pipe above him cracked and a thin stream of water showered onto his head. He came to the realization that whatever went into the sink would come onto his head afterwards. He pulled his head back and spread his legs apart so the stream only landed onto the bottom of the wooden cabinet between his knees. He looked straight ahead to see hair come out of the crack with the water. The shaver and the sink turned off and the sound of a toothbrush commenced. The man, Zasalamel stopped, turned the sink back on and spit, leaving bluish saliva to seep through the crack and land between Hwang's legs. The cabinet door cracked open and a muscular hand reached in and grabbed the towel next to him, which Hwang could now smell that it was a sweat rag. Zasalamel wiped his forehead and rung the towel out over the sink. Sweat came out of the crack along with the water and landed between Hwang's legs. Zasalamel started coughing now, very hard. Enough to cough up phlegm. Hwang flinched.

_ABANDON SHIP!_

Hwang pushed the door open and crawled out, not caring whether Zasalamel called the police on him or not. Hwang hit his head on the bathroom door and looked up, realizing the door was locked. Zasalamel picked Hwang up by the neck of his shirt and pushed him against the door. His infuriated face faded away at the sight of Hwang's.

"Wait, you're the guy from last night, aren't you? Yeah. What would you be doing here?" He seemed to be asking that to himself. He lifted a pocket watch out of his pocket and looked at it. "I must've used my own instead of the company one. Yes, that would make you come here."

Hwang had no idea what he was talking about and reached his left hand for the doorknob, twisted the lock and pushed the door open. Now that he was free of the man's grasp, he ran to the bedroom window, grabbed a hanger out of the closet, hooked it around the clothesline above the window that led to a tree in the backyard, and slid down the line, too stressed to realize that Zasalamel probably knew what caused him to wake up in the manner he did.

He lifted his feet to avoid the hands of the fangirls trying to grab him or his clothes. He succeeded in avoiding them, but hit his forehead on the tree branch above. Now he had an aching headache, and on top of that, the fangirls were climbing over the fence and speeding over to Hwang's current location. Despite his headache, Hwang reached up with his right hand and grabbed the next branch. He pulled himself up and repeated the process until he was at the top, forty feet above the ground. Even at that height, the fangirls were able to climb on each other's shoulders and grab his leg. Hwang was forced to unsheathe his sword and cut away at the hand-binds.

Fortunately for Hwang, the fangirls all descended the tree and averted their eyes from him and focused on a different objective. Hwang saw more fangirls running down the street in front of the house and those who were after him joined them, destroying the backyard on the way.

Hwang sighed of relief but shot his left hand up to grip his aching head. There was undoubtedly a bruise, and he was afraid it might swell to a larger size. The increased volume of the fangirls' screams didn't help at all to quell the pain. He needed to find a doctor, quickly.

He walked through the town, which he didn't recognize. Last night he had invited his friend Mina and his "friend" Yunsung to dinner and a show afterwards. They had walked through the town to their destination, looking around at any shops they may have wanted to stop by later, but this town looked nothing like the one they were in last night, and none of the shops looked familiar. He had a gut feeling that he was several miles from that restaurant. He tried desperately to search through his memory for any clues as to what happened that night. All he could find left in his mind was Yunsung tripping their waiter, himself eating a steak, Yunsung cutting a table in half on the way in with his sword, Yunsung losing his sword in the bathroom, Mina strangling Yunsung for sneezing on her salad, and himself pushing Yunsung back into his seat when he tried to climb up onto the table for reasons unknown. He couldn't remember anything about the show they went to or anything that happened after dinner. Perhaps there was something in his food that caused him to fall asleep?

He arrived at a doctor's office. When he opened the front door, he felt and explosion behind him and found pink liquid on the front steps. The doctor guided him inside and let him sit on the table. "Hello, my name is Doctor Henry Beemis," he said, adjusting his thick, thick glasses. "I'll be more than happy to…" He started reading a sign that read in large letters: **Remember, Beemis. No reading while treating the patients!**

Hwang stared at him for a bit, then interrupted, "I have a horrible headache. Could you fix it for me, please?"

Dr. Beemis looked down at him. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I read too much. Now, what have you come here for?"

"I just said. I have a horrible headache. Could you fix it?"

"Oh, uh, yes, of course," the doctor said, adjusting his glasses and reaching into his freezer. He rummaged through objects like syringes, reading the writing on each one as he tossed them aside. "Ah, here we are." He pulled an icepack out from under a cup labeled 'Ogre's Blood,' and placed it atop Hwang's head. "There, that'll fix it. Just keep that on for a few hours and it should stop swelling."

Dr. Beemis turned to the front door having heard a pink-stuff-water balloon explode. He left Hwang and opened the door for someone Hwang could not see, being concealed by a wall. He walked his newest patient in for Hwang to see.

"Hwang? What happened to you?"

Hwang looked up and saw Mina's face pointing towards him. His jaw dropped. Should he tell her about waking up with some stranger in a weird house? "Oh, Mina. Uh, long story. Can't tell you now. Probably can't tell you anytime for that matter." Dr. Beemis' hand reached behind Hwang and grabbed the back of his shirt, yanking him off the table and onto his back on the floor, only increasing the headache. Feeling no longer welcomed, Hwang silently exited the building.

Pressing the icepack to his scalp, Hwang walked the city streets, on the boulevard of broken dreams. He rotated his head ninety degrees, then back around, trying to search for anything that he might recognize. Nothing rang a bell to him. He also looked for any hints that could indicate what town he was trapped in. Eerie music played in Hwang's mind as he read a sign that read, "Welcome to the Twilight Zone."

A man dashed around the corner, his feet slipping on the pavement, the back of his clothes lighting the sky with fire. He screamed and ran past Hwang, who nearly caught fire himself, had he not evasively jumped back into a brick wall. Dr. Beemis threw open the door to the doctor's office and hopped down the stairs with a fire extinguisher, which he used to put out the fire on the man. A Japanese woman gripping a chainsaw turned around the corner as fast as the flaming man, but there was no fire, and she ran more gracefully than the man, without slipping and flailing her arms. She tugged on the man's armor and dragged him up the street, refusing to let him walk by himself.

Hwang started to walk again, still holding the icepack to his head, but was again interrupted when a young, red-haired boy dashed around the same corner, but this time climbed up the brick wall. Hwang could make out that it was Yunsung, still making trouble. Hwang had a theory that Yunsung had AD/HD or something of the sort, as things like this happened almost everyday. Yunsung presented no rest to their school. It was ironic that Yunsung actually graduated with high marks and surprised everyone, though most found it surprising that he graduated at all, though a number of others found it surprising that he wasn't murdered by any of the students, having made so many enemies.

Yunsung peered down at Hwang and held his left index finger to his lips. He clung for dear life, as Hwang noticed him attempting to prevent his pants from falling, and failing at that, revealing underwear with a picture printed on it of his childhood hero, Captain Korea and his sidekick Seoulboy.

A blonde-haired man in expensive clothing and a green cape ran around the corner in the same fashion as Yunsung, followed by a little girl with red hair. "Have you seen a stupid looking Korean kid with sword like yours come by here?" he asked in an accent that Hwang couldn't tell if it was British, French or Romanian. Hwang shook his head, staring down the barrel of a loaded rapier in the man's left hand. "He will pay in _BLOOD!_" the man howled, furiously. He continued past him, with the little girl following him, repeating the word, 'blood.'

Yunsung loosened his grip on the edge of the building and tumbled to the ground, hitting his chin on a protruding brick. "Thanks, man," he loudly whispered to Hwang.

Hwang wrapped his fingers around Yunsung's neck. "What the hell have you done this time, you idiot!"

Yunsung ripped the fingers away. "Why are you strangling someone that saved your life last night?"

Hwang's eyes widened. Yunsung somehow remembered. "What happened? Tell me!"

"Well, first, you… Hey look! A brown bear!" He pointed behind Hwang. Hwang didn't move. "A dinosaur!" Hwang didn't move. "A lizardman!" Hwang didn't move. "A golem!" Hwang didn't move. Yunsung ran in the opposite direction as fast as he could. Hwang began to give chase, only to be strangled by a giant golem, which had snuck up behind him. His feet left the pavement and he dropped his icepack.

"Squirm! Scream! Scum!" was what he heard before he fell unconscious.

"Skunk! Scribble! Score!" continued the golem's voice.

Next Chapter: Yunsung's Story


	7. Yunsung's Story

**Chapter 7: Yunsung's Story**

Yunsung's chest hurt. He looked down at it to see it covered in blood, but curiously with no real wound. "Damn, what did I do last night?" He looked around, hoping to see empty beer bottles and some hooker he may have hired, but only found garbage surrounding his aching body. "I guess I'm still a virgin," he sighed. Only then did he come to the realization that garbage was surrounding his aching body. He also noticed that there was only a crack in the ceiling that let any light in. He was trapped in some sort of confined room with no way out.

He decided to entertain himself with a half-eaten cheeseburger and a shredded piece of paper. "This is Lieutenant Papershred reporting for duty. I am boarding the burgership and flying to planet soda bottle!" Yunsung stuck the piece of paper in between the lettuce and the onion on the burger. "Zoom, zoom! Look out for the bottlecap invaders!" He pulled the cap off the soda bottle and tossed it over his chest, missing the burger. "That was close! I need to be more careful." He placed the burger on top of the soda bottle and pulled the piece of paper out. "I have arrived at planet…"

The ceiling opened and Yunsung finally became aware of the fact that he was lying on his back in a germ-filled dumpster. The person who opened it apparently threw a leather suit in. It glided temporarily, then settled in a groove next to Yunsung's right shoulder.

"Burn in Hell, Abercrombie & Fitch Tight Leather Division!" was what Yunsung heard as a lit match fell into the dumpster, landing in the pit of the purple leather suit. The door closed again, leaving Yunsung still trapped. The suit caught fire almost instantly, and the fire started to spread past just the suit. It crept up out of the ditch it was nestled in and trickled toward Yunsung. To avoid dying a fiery death, which was one thing he promised himself not to do, he pushed himself to the side of the dumpster, shoving some of the garbage away from him, which included the burger and the paper.

When he realized what had happened, it was too late. "Lieutenant Papershred! NOOO!" He shot his hand into the fire and pulled the half burnt paper out and cuddled it, holding it to his chest. Since it was still hot, it burned his torso. "Ow! Screw you!" He threw the piece of paper into the ever-growing fire.

The dumpster opened again and another leather suit fell in, nestling directly next to the original one. "Ditto!" someone else yelled. The fire grew twice as large now. Yunsung continued to back away into the corner, but it got to the point where he couldn't escape the heat it gave off and he hit his head.

"I'm outta here." He pushed the door open; the sound of hinges squeaking loudly rattling in his ears. He stumbled out and ended up somersaulting when he tripped over the edge, and ended up falling on his stomach. He lay there for a few seconds, and lifted himself off the ground when he realized one of the leather suits was snagged on his foot. Frantic and panicking, Yunsung kicked off the suit and hurled it into a wooded area behind the alley he was in. The tree it made contact with burst into flames in seconds. "Trees are flammable? Whoa, what have I been doing these past ten years?"

Yunsung ran in the opposite direction of the blaze and out of the alleyway, avoiding the scene of the crime. No one would be able to know it was him who created the forest fire, not even that bear with the pants on TV.

As he walked out of a parking lot, which apparently belonged to a shopping mall, as well as the dumpster that housed him for the night, he noticed a small, dark brown dog following him. Yunsung didn't like dogs very much. "Go away!" he yelled. The dog continued to follow him. "Think you're cute, huh, puppy? I said go away!" The dog tilted its head to the side and stepped forward. Yunsung snarled in fury. "Stupid dog!" He ran forward, shot his leg out, and kicked the dog with all his might.

The dog traveled farther than he expected. It flew over the mall and through a football field, coincidentally over the goal post, causing an argument between the coaches of the two teams on whether the field goal was made or not, which eventually led to so much aggression that both coaches pulled out switchblades and stabbed each other. These were the first two fatalities of the day indirectly caused by Yunsung.

Yunsung pondered of the night before, when he went to dinner with Hwang and Mina. He remembered taking actions he didn't think through first, but he did that all the time. He didn't remember what the actions were, exactly. The only thing he remembered was staring at Mina's outfit, and getting a section of his hair uprooted as punishment. _Mmm… Soul Calibur 2 1P… Grahhhh…_he thought to himself, drooling and not realizing it. He wiped his chin and continued to think. Nope, nothing returned to his malfunctioning mind.

Except for the fact that he had promised to go out with Talim on that same night. Yunsung totally forgot, although part of that was on purpose because he would probably rather stare at Mina's outfit than go out with Talim, even though she was one of the very few people tolerant of him. Yunsung wiped more drool off his chin. Talim was probably on the warpath by now. That's the reason she was able to put up with him, she also had major emotional problems of her own. She had the strongest mood swings most people had ever seen. She was usually calm, sweet, and just cute, but wouldn't hesitate to slice someone's throat if they bumped into her and caused her to drop whatever she was holding.

Yunsung put the thought of Talim behind him and continued walking randomly. He imagined he would eventually find someone he knew, from his school or something. That he did. He recognized someone about a year younger than him, but a few inches taller named Goh. He and Yunsung were pals, right?

"Hey, Goh!" Yunsung called. Goh turned his head and his gleeful expression transformed into one of fear in less than a second.

"Oh gods, not you! Please, not you! I thought I was done with you when you left! Please, don't hurt me!" Goh slipped and fell over on his back, where he crawled backwards against the wall of a weapon store he had just left, empty-handed. He held his hands out in front of him to try to wave Yunsung off, which proved futile. Yunsung only stepped closer and closer. Goh's already loud breath sped up.

Yunsung scratched his head, raising an eyebrow. He remembered now. Goh was the kid he used to throw hydrochloric acid at in chemistry class, and the kid he always pinned against the floor and repeatedly poked him in the funny bone during training. But they were still pals, weren't they? Goh scrambled to his feet and ran off, screaming. Yunsung shrugged and resumed his journey of… something.

He strolled along, paying no attention to his surroundings. Eventually, he encountered a Frenchman with a British accent and an Italian sword. He glared toward Yunsung with fury, his upper lip seemingly shrinking and his eyes narrowing. Yunsung spun his head around, checking for anyone nearby the man could have been looking at. He saw no one. The man paced forward, revealing a red-haired little girl behind him, coming barely up to his neck, sharing the same expression of rage.

"Uh oh. What do you want?" Yunsung sighed.

"You will suffer!" the man cried out before rushing at Yunsung with his rapier aimed at his heart. The little girl followed in the same pose, with her own rapier in front. Yunsung was too startled to remember anything he learned from training, so he tossed his hands up into the air, casting his scimitar over the three sword-wielders' heads and sprinted away as fast as he could.

Yunsung hardly outran the two, predictably darting around the same handful of buildings repeatedly. They were catching up with him. Quickly thinking, he ran between two buildings, and when he arrived at the other side, he turned the corner, leapt up and grasped onto a ledge just below a second story window. He pulled his feet up so that the rapier people wouldn't notice. He looked down to see Hwang, holding an icepack to his head and staring at him. Before he could say anything to him, Yunsung held up his index finger to his mouth to prevent Hwang from saying his name.

Hwang, luckily, obeyed. When his pursuers arrived at the destination, they looked around and found no one but Hwang. "Have you seen a stupid looking Korean kid with sword like yours come by here?" the Frenchman asked Hwang. He responded by shaking his head. "He will pay in _BLOOD!_" the man shouted, running past Him.

"_BLOOD!"_ the little girl repeated, following him.

Yunsung couldn't hold on any longer and dropped to the ground once his opponents disappeared from sight, but smacked his jaw on a brick, sticking out of the wall. "Thanks, man," he said, brushing the dust off his pants.

Instead of answering, 'you're welcome,' Hwang shot his hands at Yunsung's throat and squeezed. "What the hell have you done this time, you idiot!"

Yunsung grabbed Hwang's hands and pushed them away from his neck. He had to think of something to say to make him stop. He had an idea. "Why are you strangling someone that saved your life last night?"

Hwang's eyes widened. It worked. Hwang actually believed him. What an idiot. "What happened? Tell me!"

Yunsung thought. "Well, first, you… Hey look! A brown bear!" He pointed behind Hwang. Hwang didn't move. Yunsung kept thinking. "A dinosaur!" Hwang didn't move. "A lizardman!" Hwang didn't move.

A seven-foot-tall golem entered the scene, holding a giant axe in one hand and a leather sack half full of something that Yunsung couldn't see in his other hand. His jaw dropped in terror. "A golem!" He screamed. Hwang didn't move. Yunsung ran in the opposite direction of the golem as fast as he could. Hwang started to run after him, but was halted when the golem grabbed Hwang by the throat, with fingers twice as thick as the ones Mina and Hwang used to strangle Yunsung daily. Hwang dropped the icepack and choked to unconsciousness.

Yunsung could just hear the deep voice of the monster cry out, "Squirm! Scream! Scum! Skunk! Scribble! Score!" before it the creature disappeared from earshot. Panting, he sat against a wall, trying to regain his energy.

It was here that the window just above Yunsung's head opened, allowing someone to stick their arm through, wrap it around his neck, and pull back against the brick wall. Whoever's arm this was, Yunsung came to the conclusion that he or she was very strong. Neither Hwang nor Mina's strangles could cause him to temporarily stop breathing like this one could. Yunsung reached for his sword, forgetting that he had disposed of it earlier in the streets. He couldn't tear the arm away with just his hands. He was starting to become faint.

The arm pulled him inside through the window, leaving him to lie on his back. Gasping for breath, he saw the upside down image of Talim pulling her elbow blades off her waist and thrusting them both downwards at his face. Yunsung pulled his head away just in time, and the blades got stuck in the concrete floor. He rolled forward and stood half erect. It looked like he would have to defend himself with his hands.

He Talim thrust her left blade forward, only to meet the powerful blocking hand of Yunsung, who slapped the blade to the left with his right hand, leaving a giant gash on his palm. He jumped up and down, crying in pain. So, maybe his blocking hand wasn't as powerful as he expected.

He knelt on the ground, trying to quell the pain. Talim stood over him and shot both her hands downward, but Yunsung hopped off the floor and kicked both weapons out of Talim's hands. They slid across the smooth floors into separate rooms. Disoriented, she received a powerful bitch slap across her right cheek from Yunsung's left hand.

"You sunuva!" She returned the favor with a swift groin kick. Yunsung keeled over on the floor for the third time. "Where the f were you last night!" she screamed, kicking him in the sides.

Yunsung didn't have a chance to respond, as the wall behind him suddenly exploded. He couldn't see what was happening behind the giant piece of granite that covered his face, but did hear someone say, "Ahoy, ye scurvy mongrels!"

Next Chapter: Maxi's Story


	8. Maxi's Story

Disclaimer: I don't own the Rolling Stones.

**Chapter 8: Maxi's Story**

Birds chirped in Maxi's ears. He opened his eyes and smiled. He didn't know why he was in such a good mood. It was probably his emotions lasting through the week after going out with Xianghua earlier. He turned in his bed so that he lay on his side, facing his window and the bluebirds perched at the sill. He listened to their beautiful song. It sounded kind of like "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones. Although that was a good song, the birds did not meet the expectations of the real Rolling Stones. The lyrics were missing, and that was a key part of the song. Now that he thought of it, these birds' songs weren't beautiful; they sucked.

Maxi pulled his arm out from under his blanket, ran it down the side of the bed, and felt the carpeted floor for his nunchaku. He reached underneath the bed and felt the round handle in his palm. He whipped it out from under the bed, lightning fast, and knocked each of the birds off the windowsill. He closed his eyes and tried to fall back to sleep, but there was now the problem of at least a hundred feathers scattered throughout the room. Maxi sighed. It was Saturday, his day off. He did _not_ want to spend the day cleaning bird corpses. Someone else would do it, one of his slaves. They thought they were his crewmen, but in actuality, they were considered slaves.

Maxi woke up an hour later, after falling to sleep again. Only this time, he noticed something strange. His eyes widened and he forced his spine into an erect posture. Something very odd happened when he was asleep. Something was very, very wrong.

He forgot to set his alarm! He never forgets to set the alarm, making it quite a strange occurrence indeed. The clock showed 9:00. Maxi was supposed to be up by 9:15!

"Crap! I only have fifteen minutes to lie in bed, doing nothing! Argh, why didn't I set the alarm!" He dropped his body back into the king size bed and hurried up to waste all fifteen minutes.

He catapulted himself out of his resting spot at precisely 9:15, approximately. Just in time. He had enough time to get some breakfast. His ship rattled as he stumbled through the narrow hallway to the kitchen, where he reached his arm into the upper cabinet and pulled out a brown colored box of Cap'n Grain cereal. He tore the top off with his left index finger and poured the dry wheat into a poorly handcrafted bowl. He was out of milk, so he resorted to pouring water on the cereal before beginning his feast.

The breakfast sucked. He wasn't having a good day off so far. Then again, he ate cereal for breakfast every morning, so his breakfast pretty much sucked everyday. He had a great desire for something different. He decided to use his day to do that—go out and look for some good food around town. They were at a port in some place called "The Twilight Zone," so why not go through the town here?

But first, he had business to take care of. He headed out of the kitchen and downstairs into the dungeon, where his slaves, or "crewmen" were held. As he pulled open the loud, squeaking door, letting sparse amount of light into the darkness, most of the "crewmen" looked up in Maxi's direction.

"It's comrade Maxi!" one said.

"He has news!" exclaimed another.

"Comrade Maxi, could you loosen these shackles for me, please? They're cutting at the skin on my wrists," another smiled.

Maxi replied, "Well, if I were to loosen your shackles, then I'd have to be fair and loosen everyone's shackles, and you wouldn't want to get me overstressed, would you?" They all shook their heads. The pirate continued to search for what he originally came down for. He had left his pen and paper on the desk in the dungeon the previous day, and he needed to write a letter to Xianghua. He carried his equipment back upstairs where it wasn't unbearably hot.

He inhaled the fresh, polluted air into his nose as he stepped out onto the deck, alone. He set the paper down on the railing and started writing:

"Dear Xianghua,

Wassup? I thought I'd invite you to"

A gust of wind removed the letter from the railing, blowing it into the water. "Stupid wind priestesses! I know this is their doing!" He pulled out another clean sheet of white paper from the stack and started writing something else:

"Dear Xianghua,

Thanks for the great time last weekend. You're a totally awesome gal. Let's do it again sometime, as long as it fits my schedule, because you know how busy I am all the time. You can pick the restaurant again; you have great taste, but I already told you that at the movie. Remember to call me. My number's 555-6294.

With loads of love,

Maxi"

He thought for a moment.

"P.S. Kilik's a dumbass."

He folded the letter in half, inserted it into an envelope and pasted a stamp with a picture of Desi Arnaz with his chin resting in his hands in the upper right hand corner. He stuck his tongue out and ran it along the edge of the envelope before pressing it closed. Now, he needed to make sure that she received it.

Maxi spotted his nephew, Franklin, walking along the edge of the ship, aiming his slingshot at people on the docks. He placed an empty beer bottle inside it, pulled back with his right hand, and released. The bottle glided through the air, over the water like a trebuchet, and shattered upon colliding with a rich snob's forehead, who then fell backwards into the water, cash pouring out of his pockets.

"I do say, help me. I seem to have fallen into piranha-infested waters and I have lost my monocle. Oh dear, the piranha smell the blood from my forehead. If I die, do not give my money to the poor." The snob cried.

Maxi watched a long grin creep across Franklin's face. He tapped his shoulder. "Qué pasa?" he asked.

_So he chose to be Spanish for the day,_ Maxi thought. He handed Franklin the letter. "I need you to do something for me. You remember Xianghua?"

"The crazy Japanese lady that carried her umbrella all the time when it wasn't raining?"

"No, no. The Chinese one."

"Oh, the drunk one. Capisco."

"Wait, are you Spanish or Italian today?"

"Neither, ya stupid, bloody wanker. I'm British."

"Uh, okay. Anyways, as fast as you can, get this to Xianghua. It's important."

"Oui, monsieur." Franklin vaulted over the railing of the ship and dashed away down the boardwalk. Maxi left the ship as well, hoping to get some decent, Twilight Zone food. He eventually came upon a restaurant called, 'The Spaceship Site' at around 12 o' clock noon. Just in time for lunch.

He walked in and was seated by a freaky looking waiter with a giant forehead, about seven or eight feet tall. He spoke without moving his lips, "Welcome, Earthling friend. We assure you that you won't die here. We promise to serve your every will. It says so in our rulebook." He held up a large, thick book labeled, "To Serve Man," then handed him his menu. Once the waiter left, Maxi looked it over, but noticed something odd about the items.

Ladyfingers? Blood milkshake? Manburger? Human soup?

The waiter arrived with the rulebook in his arms, once again. Maxi, suspicious, snatched the book out of his arm and opened it to the first page. It clearly stated, "This is a cookbook, not a rulebook."

Maxi's face contorted into a horrified expression. He stood up and shouted to everyone in the restaurant, "It's a cookbook! It's a cookbook!" Everyone who heard him screamed and ran around in continuous circles.

A woman ran outside and called to a man walking up a ramp to a spaceship, "Mr. Chambers! It's a cookbook!" The man stumbled and was pushed back into the ship by one of the odd folks with big foreheads.

The waiter looked at Maxi hatefully and moaned, "What'd you do that for? Now everyone's gonna be afraid of us." A group of giant-foreheaded giants walked out of the kitchen with hairnets and bloodstained gloves and all tugged at Maxi's clothes. They lifted him off the ground and tossed him outside on his stomach. He decided he didn't want to try food in the Twilight Zone.

Hands in his coat pockets, he traveled through the street until he saw Franklin coming back up towards him. He waved. Franklin increased his pace. "Tío Maxi, I got the letter delivered!"

"Good. What'd she say?"

"Oh, I didn't give it to her. I gave it to a brown-haired man with a staff. He said he would give it to her."

Maxi immediately started to sweat all over. He swallowed. "Did he have a little scar on his cheek? And were there a whole ton of fangirls after him?"

"Hai."

"Oh… Shit." No doubt this was Kilik. He was going to tear Maxi to pieces if he found out about what happened. If Maxi wanted to continue living, he needed to do what he should have done four years ago. Kill Kilik.

He found a weapon store and bought a crossbow. He placed it down on the counter in front of the employee, wearing a sticker that read, "Hualin." She asked, "Is this what you're looking for?" Maxi shook his head and pointed to the box of arrows behind the counter. "Is this what you're looking for?" she repeated.

"Yes."

"You have a sharp eye!" she said, taking Maxi's gold and giving back change. "Come again! Thanks a lot!"

What an odd woman. She said the exact same things to the last man who came in.

He located Kilik. He was in a large house at the top of a hill. Maxi could see him in the top window, watching a movie, with the volume clearly turned up all the way. Maxi could see the silhouette of two people sitting next to him, though neither of them mattered. Kilik's death was all Maxi sought.

Maxi loaded his first arrow, aimed, and fired. The arrow landed on the side of the house. Damn. There were only five arrows in the box. He loaded another arrow and launched it. It whizzed through the air and crashed through the window, creating an explosion of shattered glass, but failed to come in contact with anything but a wall. Kilik looked at the arrow and one of the people next to him on the sofa stood up to extract it out of the wall. The silhouette came back to the window, where it slowly became visible and morphed into Xianghua.

Maxi dropped his jaw upon seeing her, as she heaved the arrow back toward Maxi. He ducked and it embedded itself in the brick wall of the building he stood in front of. He attempted to remove it from the wall, but failed. It was really stuck. Wow, she was stronger than he thought. He squinted back up at the window and decided that she probably didn't see him. Maxi continued and shot his remaining three arrows, all hitting the wall.

Maxi plodded back to the weapon store to buy more arrows. The annoying cashier was still there. He asked for another box of arrows, and of course, was asked, "Is this what you're looking for?" He covered his ears and nodded. "You have a sharp eye!" He grabbed his box and sprinted out before he managed to hear her say, "Come again! Thanks a lot!"

Instead, he heard the screams of a Korean man outside the store. He was already running as fast as he could, so all he could understand was, "Gods, not you," and "I thought I was done with you." Poor guy. He sounded like he was in trouble.

He arrived back outside the house, ready to shoot Kilik, once again. Hopefully he wouldn't miss so horribly this time. He kneeled in the same spot, loaded the first arrow, aimed, and…

Someone stood in the way.

Maxi lowered his crossbow and peered up at an old man with purple skin and a common pirate's hat. "Ahoy, would ye know warrr I'd find a strong soul?" he asked, rubbing a bruise on his ribs, which seemed to have a mark of a soccer ball.

"What do you mean?" Maxi asked.

"Errm, yarr. Do ye know any souls that be strong?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. What would constitute a strong soul?"

"Arrr…" the old pirate paused. He seemed to stare at Maxi's arrow, still embedded in the brick wall. "Thar be two in here!" he exclaimed, yanking the arrow out of the building with all his might. The brick wall collapsed upon having the arrow removed. Pieces of brick and plaster scattered everywhere. "Ahoy, ye scurvy mongrels!" the man cried out. A very large piece of plaster landed on Maxi, crushing him. His left arm was stretched across his chest and the crossbow jabbed at his hip. It was quite a painful position to be in.

"Dangit. Why do I always die in my endings?" he groaned.

Next Chapter: Mitsurugi's Story


	9. Mitsurugi's Story

**Chapter 9: Mitsurugi's Story**

Ah, Saturdays. They never failed to change every one of Heishiro Mitsurugi's emotions suddenly into joy. This day was no different. The best part about this day was that the sun was shining brilliantly through his bedroom window, and onto his face.

Come to think of it, this wasn't his bedroom window; it was his living room window. How did his mattress move out of his room and into his living room while he was asleep? He never sleepwalked, and even if he did, he doubted he would be able to bend down and pull his mattress through his narrow wooden door and past the kitchen into the tiny living room.

The front door opened. Mitsurugi didn't realize he was so close to the door, and due to his lack of coordination in early mornings, he didn't immediately realize the door was opening until it swung all the way and pinned his head against the wall. He pushed the door slightly open to allow himself to rub the bruise on his skull, but only then realized that he couldn't move his arms. The blanket was tucked very, very tightly under the mattress. He had to wait until whoever stood behind the door decided to close it.

Apparently, whoever lurked behind it did not like Mitsurugi very much. The door closed minimally, then slammed back on his head, quite harder than the last time. Now he had two pain-inducing bruises on his cranium.

He steadily cracked his tear-filled eyes open to look up at his neighbor, Taki, looking quite infuriated down at him, _not_ wearing a ponytail. This was extremely rare. Mitsurugi barely even recognized her, and didn't remember ever seeing her hair down before. He stopped thinking about her crazy hair and concentrated on the reason for which she had come.

Taki held up a small, brown dog by the scruff in her right hand, her teeth grinding together. "Is this your dog!" She screamed so loud that it gave Mitsurugi a horrible headache.

"No," he managed to leak out of his mouth. Taki snarled and chucked something at his face before storming out the door with the little dog still in her fist. Mitsurugi, still incapable of moving his arms out from under the blanket, was forced to push whatever was on his face, off of it with his tongue. Once it had landed on the floor beside the mattress, Mitsurugi turned his head, avoiding putting his neck in any more pain. He looked down what had fallen off his face to discover his wallet lying beside his head. He could clearly see the picture on his license showing in it of him as a sixteen-year-old, with his eyes closed as the picture was taken. He recalled how stoned he was back then. How did his wallet get into Taki's hands?

He decided he needed to find out. He gathered all his strength and rolled over, pulling the mattress with him. He used his teeth to bite parts of his carpet and pull the rest of his body forward, until he was out the door. Well, only his head made it out the door, as the mattress didn't fit in the doorway. Taki noticed him very quickly. A smoke bomb exploded in Mitsurugi's living room and sent smoke in through his nostrils and into his sensitive lungs. His eyes were tearing once again, so he couldn't see Taki enter through the smoke.

He did, however, hear Taki unsheathe one of her kunai knifes and cut the elastic straps that held the blanket so tightly to the mattress, finally freeing him. Before he had the opportunity to thank her, she grabbed Mitsurugi by his shirt collar and tossed him into his bedroom. "Get dressed. Your dog ran up a tree."

"It's not my dog! Honestly, sometimes you're such a bi-"

Taki yanked Mitsurugi by his ponytail and held her other knife against it, the evil-spirit-possessed knife, named Pekki-Maru. Or was it Mekki-Maru? Rekki-Maru?

"Finish that sentence and your beloved hairstyle dies." Mitsurugi froze, barely even moving his eyes. Taki released him and closed the bedroom door. He put on his armor and met Taki outside, ponytail regained, who ordered him to follow, under penalty of hair removal.

_Why is she acting like a damn nazi? _Mitsurugi thought to himself, not realizing he thought it out loud. One of the worst mistakes of his life.

Mitsurugi suddenly felt shaving cream on his face, then felt it being stripped off in a downward motion. He touched his face with both hands and found his trademark beard eradicated. His lip quivered and his eyebrows shot up, glimpsing Taki wiping shaving cream and stray hair off her blade. How the fudge did she do that? He didn't even see her raise a finger.

She glared back at him and gave him the evil eye. Mitsurugi dared not even think anything slightly negative about her.

"You're hair is ugly and graying!" he blurted out without thinking.

Taki turned back at him, fire blazing in her eyes. "You just lost your ponytail," she whispered, her voice shaking with fury. In an instant, Taki vanished and reappeared in the same spot and Mitsurugi's hair fell down his back.

After following her for a few more minutes, every step on each blade of grass making Mitsurugi more and more nervous of what Taki's next action would be, she stopped. She spun around to face Mitsurugi and pointed her left index finger up to the sky. "Your dog's up this tree. Get him down so I can kick his ass."

"I told you, it's not my dog!"

Taki responded by grabbing Mitsurugi's sandal and yanking it off, then tickling the sole of his bare foot. Mitsurugi thumped on the ground with his fists, crying in pain, err, ticklishness.

"I'll get the dog down! I'll get it down! Please stop!"

Taki grabbed his ankle and flung his body over her shoulder. He landed on his stomach on a thick tree limb and suddenly remembered that he was severely acrophobic. How would he possibly be able to climb this tree? He steadily inhaled and exhaled several times before reaching for the next branch about a foot above him. He tightly wrapped his fingers around it and pulled the rest of his body up onto the branch.

"Could we… take a break? Please?" he panted, out of breath.

"You're three feet off the ground! How is it possible for a samurai to lose his breath after climbing one branch!"

"It's possible if you're afraid to die! Why can't you do it? You can teleport."

"It's your dog."

"No it's not! Stop saying that!"

In a burst of smoke, Mitsurugi suddenly appeared at the top of the tree, where he met the little brown dog, crouched on the top branch, gazing at his beardless face. The dog waited for a few seconds before hopping down each branch individually until it descended to the green earth and nonchalantly strolled away, leaving Mitsurugi to hug the tree limb, desperately trying to keep himself from crying. He calmed his quivering lip and kept his eyes wide open to keep them dry from tears.

He called down to Taki on the ground, speaking quickly to avoid her realizing that his voice was trembling, "The dog's gone! Can you bring me down now?"

Taki responded by shouting back, "I'm going to get a chainsaw to cut you down!" and calmly strolled away, as if thinking that Mitsurugi could handle himself at the top of the tree, beardless.

Mitsurugi hugged the branch as tightly as ever, with his eyes clenched closed. What was taking her so long? He could count the clouds moving by while waiting. Two he noticed were shaped like Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, and disappeared when they collided. And just for them to move together took ten minutes. He could see his fingernails growing, which was technically a good thing, since if his fingernails were growing, that meant that his hair was growing back, too. Still, he would much rather be waiting on land.

Especially after what happened next.

In the distance in the direction of where Taki had gone, he could see something flying towards him that looked like a phoenix. Only the bird part of the flame-bird was what appeared to be a leather suit. Also, the flaming leather suit couldn't fly, so it landed on a tree. Mitsurugi's tree to be exact.

In less than a minute, the entire tree burst into flames. It was clearly evident to Mitsurugi that the blaze was crawling upwards ever steadily, and would soon reach his branch, then him. He could feel the heat of the fire increasing every second, sweat pouring out of his pores. He held his head up high to escape the heat, and doing so led him to notice the little brown dog sailing through the air across a football field. _Hurry up, Taki!_

Taki finally came back with a chainsaw, price tag still attached. She turned it on, not even noticing that the tree was on fire, and commenced slicing at the base. The tree was cut all the way through, and it toppled over onto the ground, missing Taki by a few inches, who didn't budge. Mitsurugi hopped out of the tree, sighing in relief, then thanked Taki, who replied by saying nonchalantly, "You're on fire."

Mitsurugi looked over his shoulder to see that his back was in fact, on fire. He shrieked and dashed through the streets, still shrieking. His worst fear was coming true. He finally tripped on the pavement, and a man with a moustache and thick, thick glasses ran out of a small building with a fire extinguisher and extinguished the fire on Mitsurugi. He could feel Taki's hand on the nape of his neck, pulling him by the shirt, before he passed out and woke up… somewhere else.

Next Chapter: Taki's Story


	10. Taki's Story

**Chapter 10: Taki's Story**

Ah, Saturdays. They never failed to change every one of Taki's emotions suddenly into anger. This day was no different. The worst part about this day was that the sun was shining brilliantly through her bedroom window, and onto her face.

Days like these made her frustrated with the rest of the world. It made her think about how clueless the rest of the world was when it came to controversial issues like Soul Edge. Everyone just frolics through the flowers, without a care in the world, while she gets stuck with the job of protecting those dumbasses from demons that target flower-frolickers. She used to love her job since she used to love other people, but now after doing it for more than seven years, she had gotten so, so tired of it. She now hated everything, and had half a mind to simply let Soul Edge destroy the world and take the week off.

She sat up in bed, sighing in disgust. She trudged into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She stood perfectly still under the water for about half an hour before she actually noticed something on her ankle. She bent her neck downward and found a little brown dog gnawing at her right ankle. Taki, still too tired and frustrated to notice, just kept standing for a minute before letting out a scream, more high pitched than her usual voice.

She opened the shower door and kicked the dog out hard, slamming it into the bathroom wall. She grinded her teeth as she got dressed in one of her unusually tight outfits. As she grabbed the dog by the scruff, she noticed something small and leather in between its teeth. Taki yanked it out of its mouth to discover that it was a wallet. She opened it up and found a picture of her neighbor Mitsurugi on his license, in which he was clearly stoned.

The dog obviously belonged to Mitsurugi, and for what it did, he would suffer. With the dog still in hand, she charged out the door and down to Mitsurugi's front door, not having time to fix her hair. She knocked on the door loudly and then kicked it open. She could hear Mitsurugi moaning from behind the door, so rather than pulling it away from his face, she slammed it back on his head again as punishment for his poor ownership of the dog. She barged in and held the dog up to Mitsurugi, still in bed in the living room for some reason.

"Is this your dog!" she screamed. Mitsurugi simply whispered no. Taki, too filled with fury to be forgiving, hurled his wallet at him. She stormed outside to continue to search for the owner of the dog. The dog that struggled free of Taki's hand and dashed away.

Taki gave chase, and being a ninja, was fast enough to keep up with it. However, she was too tired and mad to actually catch it. It ran up a tree before she was able to grab it. She sighed in frustration and reluctantly traveled back to Mitsurugi's house.

She threw a smoke bomb into the ground and reappeared in Mitsurugi's living room where she found him biting into the carpet on his stomach, and apparently bound to the mattress by a small blanket tightly attached to the corners of the mattress. Taki once again sighed, unsheathed Mekki-Maru, and cut the elastic on the sheet that kept it from being pulled off. Mitsurugi crawled out from under it and Taki immediately ordered, "Get dressed. Your dog ran up a tree."

"It's not my dog! Honestly, sometimes you're such a bi-" Before Mitsurugi finished his sentence, Taki rapidly unsheathed her knife and held it against his ponytail.

"Finish that sentence and your beloved hairstyle dies," she said, her voice shaking with anger. She tossed him into his bedroom, then finally fixed her ponytail, which she never goes out without, except in this case.

He came out a few minutes later with his head down, and followed Taki to the tree. Halfway there, she heard him whisper, "Why is she acting like a damn nazi?"

Taki exhaled, then in a flash of light, whipped out a can of shaving cream, sprayed it on Mitsurugi's face, swiped Rekki-Maru downwards and removed his famous beard. He had only realized it when she began to wipe the shaving cream and hair off of her blade. She stared at him, watching and enjoying seeing his lower lip quiver in fear. She turned around, and almost immediately, as if in response, heard him yell out, "You're hair is ugly and graying!"

_That's it!_ Taki had not been this infuriated with that idiot in months. Her hands shaking, she reached for Mekki-Maru. "You just lost your ponytail." In yet another flash of light, she zoomed around the ronin and sliced his hair off. Watching each strand glide to the ground brought her much sadistic pleasure.

They finally arrived at the tree that the little dog disappeared up. Taki turned back at Mitsurugi. "Your dog's up this tree. Get him down so I can kick his ass."

"I told you, it's not my dog!"

Taki shoved Mitsurugi to the ground, threw his right sandal off and started tickling it with her index finger. Mitsurugi cried out, "I'll get the dog down! I'll get it down! Please stop!" Taki pulled her finger away and flung his body over the first branch of the tree. He only managed to ascend one branch before sighing, "Could we… take a break? Please?"

"You're three feet off the ground! How is it possible for a samurai to lose his breath after climbing one branch!"

"It's possible if you're afraid to die! Why can't you do it? You can teleport."

"It's your dog."

"No it's not! Stop saying that!"

Taki sighed in frustration once again, and reached into her pocket for a smoke bomb. She threw one into the ground and transported Mitsurugi to the top branch of the tree. In response to that action, the dog actually ran down the tree and past Taki, who kicked it in the ribs as it ran off for sneaking into her house.

"The dog's gone! Can you bring me down now?" Mitsurugi shouted from the branch.

"I'm going to get a chainsaw to cut you down!" she screamed back at him before walking to the shopping mall nearby.

It took about five minutes to actually get to the mall, but took much longer because of the line at the cash register, which ironically, consisted of only one person. The only store that sold chainsaws was called, 'The Manly Store,' and sold mostly manly things, as the name implied. Chainsaws were manly items, so they were obviously sold there, though she felt a bit timid about entering this particular store, as only men used it. She impatiently waited, hoping to the gods that none of her Fu-Ma buddies from the headquarters spotted her and spread rumors about her being a lesbian, which they had done previously before because of one time she went to the wrong address for a party. She shivered at the thought of having a flashback of that horrible night, and decided not to let the author know about what happened, since it was just too embarrassing for even him to list in a story.

She tapped her foot, waiting for the other customer, a skinny, creepy bald man with tight leather clothing, to put on the 'cool' gangsta clothing they sold there, then buy it from the attractive cashier with long, blonde hair, most likely a target of fangirls.

The creepy man finally finished and paid the blonde man, walking out with his leather suit in hand, pulling up his baggy pants and allowing Taki to buy the chainsaw.

The young man, whom Taki recognized from somewhere, looked down at the chainsaw, then back up at Taki, lifting an eyebrow. "Are you… uh… lesbian or something?" He asked.

_Damnit!_ This day just kept getting worse and worse. And to make it even more worse and worse, a group of female Fu-Mas overheard him while walking past the store. Taki's eyes dilated and her stomach sank when she heard their annoying high voices.

"So she really is a lesbian."

"I knew it all along, ever since she went to the wrong Christmas Eve party and **(censored by the author to keep the story appropriate)**"

Taki watched them walk away with their stupid pink masks and their stupid bags labeled 'The Girly Store.' Her anger swelled up and caused her to sweat, making her tighter suit very uncomfortable. She hated these suits, since all Fu-mas were required to wear them, and the fact that all Fu-mas were required to get breast implants and throw away all their bras upon joining the clan as well made her hate them even more. Yes, even the men were required to receive breast implants, which contributed to her hatred of the world and her own life.

She tugged at her collar to try to keep cool as the others left, but it was still too tight to do so. Taki inhaled slowly, took the chainsaw from the apathetic cashier and stormed out.

It took a few minutes to find the tree, which was now smothered in fire. Mitsurugi was alive, of course. He survived being shot by Tanegashima, Taki's frequent attacks whenever he tried to steal Soul Edge, and getting caught in a meat grinder on a tow truck the previous week. Taki debated to herself how it was possible not only to survive that, but also just to get in that situation. Taki turned on the chainsaw, pulling her face back when the incredibly loud humming started, and connected it horizontally with the tree. After pushing the chainsaw all the way through the tree, it creaked, tilted, and toppled over and Mitsurugi spilled out of the tip at the end.

"Thank you," he said, crawling on the ground. Taki looked down at him, feeling a little bit of superiority from the fact that he appeared to be bowing down to her.

"You're on fire," she sighed, pointing to his back, which flames were creeping up. Mitsurugi shrieked like a girl and fled, flailing his arms, a futile attempt to put the fire out, if he was, in fact, trying to do that. If he was, then that was just plain sad.

Taki once again gave pursuit. Chainsaw still in hand, she weaved around all the corners Mitsurugi did, leaving a path of burning trees that he started. He finally stopped when some weird old guy jumped out of a doctor's office and sprayed his fire extinguisher on him. Once the flames were all destroyed, Taki proceeded to him, gripped him by the shirt, and dragged him back to his house.

But they never actually made it back to their homes.

**Next Chapter: Setsuka's Story**


	11. Setsuka's Story

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck E. Cheese's or Dunkin Donuts products.

**Chapter 11: Setsuka's Story**

Tonight was finally the night. Setsuka was finally about to have her ultimate revenge on Heishiro Mitsurugi.

She hopped rooftop to rooftop, stealthy like a ninja, which was the occupation her discipline was in for the Create-a-Soul mode, even though she felt she was more of a samurai type and that Yoshimitsu guy was more of a ninja than a samurai for an occupation.

She reached the address, but before she resumed her mission, she crouched and pulled a sheet of parchment out of her kimono and reread her plan of attack.

_Phase 1: Silently enter Mitsurugi's house through chimney._

_Phase 2: Light bed on fire with a match, therefore lighting him on fire as well._

_Phase 3: Escape through back door and hang out at Chuck E. Cheese's for the rest of the night. _

She double-checked to make sure she still had her matches and her coupon for buy-one-get-one-free pizza at Chuck E. Cheese's. She had everything she needed. She squeezed through the narrow slot of the chimney and slid the fireplace door open. She tiptoed through the living room and into Mitsurugi's bedroom, where she found him sleeping soundly under the blankets.

Setsuka pulled her matchbox out, but then rethought something. If she lit the match in the tiny bedroom, the fire would spread quickly, possibly trapping her in the room to die as well. The best thing to do was to transfer it into the living room. She pulled the elastic on the edges of the blanket around the mattress, so that it held Mitsurugi tightly down to the mattress, then proceeded to drag the mattress and Mitsurugi through the bedroom door and into the living room for torching.

Before she even lit the match, the front door swung open and two fat police officers leapt inside, pointing crossbows at her. Setsuka gasped, dropping the matchbox and holding her hands over her head upon laying eyes on the weapons.

"We got a call that there is suspicious activity going on in this house," one cop with an overbite said. Setsuka gulped. He walked into the kitchen and peered down at the coffee machine on the counter. "Just as I suspected. This has coffee in it. Hey, Ed, come over here!" he called to the other cop with a bowtie, who responded by doing what the other cop said. They inspected the coffee machine before pouring the coffee into two ceramic mugs and drinking it. Setsuka waited for them to finish before she put her hands down.

Both cops turned their heads at her, looking as though they had forgotten she was ever there. They paused for a few seconds before the bucktoothed officer commanded, "We're going to need you to leave the house for… an investigation. Come back in three hours," and pulled a box of Dunkin' Munchkins out of a cabinet, grinning.

Setsuka obeyed, but only because they had crossbows. If they didn't, she'd probably hack them into pieces with her umbrella-sword for kicking her out. She sighed, pushing the back door open.

This seemed to happen every time she came up with a brilliant revenge plan. Last time her sniping attempt failed when a Chinese acrobat randomly threw a rock-hard bagel in front of Mitsurugi, which her bullet struck instead, and before that, she had succeeded in pushing him off a building and into a meat grinder on a tow truck, but he miraculously survived, much to her chagrin. This plan was her best yet, which was just extra gasoline on her frustration fire. What kind of moron would just decide to barge in at one o' clock in the morning?

Setsuka walked down the stairs on Mitsurugi's back porch, but missed a step and tumbled down the stairway, then rolled down a hill, launching off a handicap ramp at a restaurant at the bottom of the hill and landing on a jagged rock, then rolled off the rock into traffic where a horse kicked her with its back feet through a window of a convenience store, where the clerk picked her up by the back of her kimono and tossed her out a back door and into a dumpster, which tipped over, spilling her and about 3000 pounds of trash back into traffic and causing another horse to slip on a rotten peach that was originally in the dumpster and crash its buggy into the alley way that Setsuka was in, which exploded and spilled hundreds of pounds of it's cargo: pepper, which Setsuka was allergic to, so she sneezed uncontrollably until she crawled out of the alleyway and rolled down yet another hill and stopped on top of an animal cage, which broke, and allowed her to fall into a giant water dish that belonged to a monstrous gorilla that grabbed her by the hair and hurled her out of the cage with one hand and onto the hard pavement outside, where she finally exhaled and fell unconscious after enduring more pain than Mitsurugi did in the meat grinder. The author would also like to note that this might just be the longest sentence he has ever written in his life.

The next morning she woke up with a crick in her neck and an unused Chuck E. Cheese coupon still in her kimono. She pushed herself off the ground so that she was sitting erect, with her legs facing forward. She viewed her surroundings and discovered that she was in a zoo. She stood up and opened her umbrella, which she always did outside. She had a case of paranoia that it would start raining at any moment, so she always carried her umbrella everywhere. She didn't manage to exit because there was a giant crowd around a certain exhibit, and they were blocking the exit. She learned from a teenage employee that there it was a new lizardman exhibit, and they got their third one in that morning. Setsuka could only hear the creature screeching, and it didn't sound like a lizardman. It sounded like a normal human pretending to be one.

She tried to get a better view, but only got a quick glimpse and decided that it was, in fact, a normal woman. She chuckled to herself and walked away, until all hell broke loose. People were screaming bloody murder and running around in circles. Setsuka pushed people aside to see what was going on, only to see that the "lizardman" had broken loose and was chasing people around with a zanbatou.

Not only this, but the other two lizardmen (who were real lizardmen) did the same thing and escaped, wreaking havoc among the zoo-goers. A few more animals and normal people that looked like animals escaped as well, one of them screaming, "Bangoo!" The woman pretending to be a lizardman jumped on top of a cage and through a bush into the human world in response.

Setsuka decided to be the hero and take care of this mess. She whipped her sword out of her umbrella, but accidentally bashed the hilt into someone's forehead. She turned around to apologize, but they were gone. She shrugged and turned around, but didn't get too far. She somehow fell unconscious again, not knowing why.

**Next Chapter: Raphael's Story**

This came a little shorter than expected. Sorry.


	12. Raphael's Story

**Chapter 12: Raphael's Story **

Raphael's bedroom door swung open and Amy came running in. "Daddy, Daddy!" she cried.

It was morning and Raphael Sorel was still only 5 percent awake. He mumbled, "The… bodyguard took all of… Michael Douglas's… cashews…"

Amy tugged at her foster father's pajama sleeve. "Daddy, wake up! Otto's gone!" Still the only response from Raphael was another comment about Michael Douglas and mixed nuts. Amy sighed, "The nobles are waiting outside."

In less than a second, Raphael's eyes shot open and he catapulted out of bed, pulling his rapier out from behind the headboard of his bed. "I'LL KILL THEM ALL!" he screamed. Only when he looked out his window to discover there was no one at the entrance of Sorel Manor did he realize that it was only a decoy that Amy used to get him out of bed. He had fallen for it three times in the last week.

After he had calmed down, he asked Amy what was wrong. Anything that upset his beloved Amy needed to die.

"Otto's missing, I think he ran away. Can you help me find him, please?"

Raphael nodded. Otto was Amy's new puppy that he had bought for her four weeks before. By giving him a German name, Raphael could now be known as the French guy with the British accent, the Italian sword, the Romanian house, the Spanish toreador outfit and the German dog. Now he needed a Russian horse for his collection to be complete.

He changed into his finest rich-snob suit that he used only for his most thrilling adventures. His quest for Soul Edge did not really count, as he mostly stayed at home in front of the battlefield, fighting off the other characters from the game when they were 'so foolish to anger him' and he would 'celebrate their demise' by stabbing them once, then they would all have to 'take heed and not disappoint him.' Of course, that was only in Tales of Souls mode. When he was in the Arcade Edition, he could wear the suit.

Raphael and Amy walked through the town, asking random passers-by if they had seen a little brown dog, about three months old. They had very little luck in their town. However, once they passed through the town border into a place called the Twilight Zone, which the Sorels never knew existed, their bad luck changed. They discovered Otto running around in circles in a forest. Amy's eyes lit up immediately and she rushed over to the little dog to hug 'm and squeeze 'm.

But something was wrong. Otto had a few bruises on his ribs and appeared to have been up a tree, as there were fragments of leaf on his coat. If only the dog could communicate with them, they could find out how he received those bruises and what had happened to him in general. There were people who knew how to talk to animals, and they just had to find one.

After going on another search, they found someone that fit the criteria. In downtown Twilight Zone, Raphael and Amy met a lizardman with a monocle, a top hat, a cane, and a tuxedo. This lizardman was one of the few who could speak fluent British.

"Excuse me, kind sir," Raphael begged to the creature. "Would it be possible to ask you to ask our companion about his day?"

The lizardman adjusted his monocle and grinned with all his sharp teeth. "Why certainly. I'd be most appalled not to do so for a gentleman like yourself." The lizardman crouched down on all fours and stared into Otto's wandering eyes. "Arrrggnyerrrngg?" he asked in his native tongue. Otto responded with barks lasting about a minute. The lizardman sprung up back on his hind legs, adjusted his tie, and translated to Raphael what Otto had just told him.

"It seems that your friend has had quite an unpleasant morning. He had wandered off like any young canine would into a forest, which led him to a house belonging to a woman of Japanese descent. This woman kicked Otto into a wall after he entered her bathroom. He escaped by running up a tree, only to have the woman's male acquaintance climb up to retrieve him. He ran down the tree to escape once again, but was kicked in the same manner as before. After attempting to find his way home, he came across a young, cocky, red-haired Korean boy who also kicked him harder than ever- across a football field and into the forest in which you discovered him. If that's all you need, then I bid you farewell, kind sir. Cheerio!" He tipped his hat and strode off down the busy street.

Raphael and Amy were both stunned. One word ran through their minds: Revengeance. The word they had invented that's the combination of revenge and vengeance. This would be their next mission- to find and destroy the red-haired Korean and the Japanese woman.

They stormed through the city, sharpening their rapiers by dragging them along the hardened brick buildings. Spectators stared at the two and at the rage blazing in their emerald eyes. No, their eyes were not turned red from infection from Soul Edge. That's just what Raphael told Namco when he survived the fight with Nightmare and didn't want them to know the truth- that he was saved by a little elf named Link. Being infected with evil was a suitable explanation for Namco, and a lot less embarrassing for Raphael.

Raphael realized that they were getting nowhere and decided to ask some that may know of their whereabouts. He noticed a girl a little older than Amy walking in the same direction at the same speed as him. She seemed just as angry as him and Amy.

He stopped in his tracks and pivoted to face the girl as the girl did at the same time. "Have you seen a young, cocky, red-haired Korean boy that needs to die a horrific death today?" he asked the girl as she asked him the very same question, verbatim. Both of them paused, shook their heads and continued onward.

In the middle of one particular street walked a boy that fit Otto's description. The idiocy of the boy was emanating so strongly that he knew this was his target just by sensing his aura. "Uh oh, what do you want?" he moaned.

Just the boy's voice raised the level of Raphael's fury. He lifted his rapier so that it was parallel with the boy's heart. "You will suffer!" he screamed and rushed him, Amy following in the same fashion. The boy, frightened, threw his sword into the air and ran away screaming like a wussy. _Let the hunt begin!_

The pursuit lasted a few minutes, and bored the rapier-wielders because the boy ran around the same building repeatedly, as if he was too idiotic to know that his objective was to escape. He finally turned a different corner, however when Raphael and Amy caught up to him, he was nowhere to be seen. They looked in all directions but could only find a man that looked slightly like him and had the same type of sword, but was much older and didn't have such a noticeable aura.

This made Raphael even angrier. He pointed his weapon at the man and yelled, "Have you seen a stupid looking Korean kid with sword like yours come by here?" The man shook his head, both of his eyes focused primarily on Raphael's rapier. "He will pay in _BLOOD!_" he howled.

_"BLOOD!"_ Amy cried out. They continued their search, but failed in being able to locate the boy. However, they noticed a woman chasing after a man on fire that caught their attention. It was when the woman grabbed the man by the back of his armor once the fire was put out that Raphael realized that she was Japanese. This was the woman that kicked Otto.

Ever stealthily, they followed the woman through the streets, waiting for just the right moment to strike. This moment was when she dragged the now unconscious man through an abandoned alleyway. Amy appeared before the kunoichi at the end of the alley in which she was headed, blocking her path. She shrugged and turned around only to be met by Raphael, stalking his prey, rapier in hand. The woman, looking confused, turned around to see Amy even closer than before. When she tried to turn again, both Raphael and Amy pounced on their kill.

They had the woman pinned to the ground, so now came the decision of what to do with her. Should Raphael kill her on the spot? Ask her questions? Torture her? Sacrifice her to the canine gods? Ask Otto? Braid her hair in hairstyles she hates? Challenge her to a game of hockey?

First things first: "Who are you, you dog-kicking witch?" Raphael yelled in her ear.

She whispered through the space in her mouth that wasn't touching the ground, "My name's Toki. I mean Taki. What do you want?"

Amy stepped on Taki's neck harder to let her suffer for the pain she caused Otto her beloved Otto. Raphael pulled Otto out of his coat pocket, where he was hiding for the time. "Recognize this?" He held Otto in front of her face.

She looked into his puppy-dog eyes and obviously felt no sympathy. "Yeah. That frickin' dog gnawed my ankle in the shower," she murmured. Amy's anger skyrocketed. She pressed the point of her rapier into the small of Taki's back. Taki cringed, clenching her eyes shut.

"Now, do you know anything about the whereabouts of a stupid, red-haired Korean boy?"

Taki struggled to let the word "no" leave her mouth.

"Now, Amy, what say you bring this witch to the meat grinder on our tow truck?" Raphael inquired to Amy, smiling sadistically. Amy smiled in the same way and clapped her hands.

However, just as they left the alley, they saw the Korean boy again, in the same alley, being strangled by an arm through a window, which turned out to be the girl they had asked earlier. _Damn, she beat us to it._

They jumped into the building, carrying Taki with them, only to have the plaster from the building explode right in their faces. Before they all lost consciousness, they heard the words, "Ahoy, ye scurvy mongrels!"

**Next Chapter: Talim's Story**


	13. Talim's Story

Disclaimer: I don't own Burger King or it's characters.

**Chapter 13: Talim's Story**

The wind blew Talim's window open and pulled in sunlight along with it. Talim sat up. She reached with her left hand and pushed the window closed again, remaining in bed. As she retracted her arm, she felt a presence. A very strong one, that seemed to be very, very close to her. It bore no hatred, but was clearly not a friend, either.

She turned her head to the right and found a man with a plastic, bearded, smiling king mask, a crown, and a robe, sitting on the other side of the bed, staring at her with dead eyes. There was silence for a moment until the man in the king mask lifted his index finger, reached under Talim's blanket and pulled out a breakfast sandwich with a wrapper labeled 'Burger King' on it, bringing it closer to Talim as an offering. He held up his third, fourth, and fifth fingers on his right hand with his thumb and index finger forming a circle, still letting the sandwich rest in his left hand for Talim to receive.

Talim blinked with her mouth half open. She stared into the king's frozen face, frozen in her own position as well. The King didn't move at all, still holding the sandwich and his fingers up. Talim blinked again. She decided to end the awkward silence between them.

She gripped the handle to one of her elbow blades on her nightstand and with a quick motion, slashed horizontally, slicing the King's chest. He made not a sound, not even a grunt. He simply unraveled his fingers, letting the sandwich drop and fell backwards off the bed. Talim, still frightened from the appearance of the Burger King, let out a sigh of relief. She slouched back into her bed, and waited until her heart stopped pounding so rapidly.

She turned back to the right for her eyes to meet the Burger King again, towering over her. His appearance was unchanged, but his fury was evident by his aura. He now grasped two sandwiches, one in each fist, squeezing them as if to crush them. He raised both his arms and flung both sandwiches forward in Talim's direction. She rolled off the bed and the sandwiches shot through her window, sending shattered glass in and out of her bedroom. She rolled in the other direction off her bed, then catapulted herself over the bed as she heard the King's footsteps, whipping both her elbow blades across his shoulders. He toppled onto the bed and Talim front flipped with her back still turned to him, and sprung her feet outwards, kicking the Burger King with the force to knock him out her window.

She spun around and found him holding onto the windowsill for his own survival. Since her house was overlooking a waterfall, if he fell, it would be two hundred feet to his death. Something that Talim wished to grant him. She wrenched her fingers around his wrists and tore them from her window, letting him fall down the waterfall into the abyss. Of course, the Burger King was immortal, as evident when he survived Talim's first attack, which would have killed an ordinary human, and he would soon return. Once she left her house, she immediately found him again, offering Burger King coffee to a man working on a power line, with a power drill concealed behind the King's back. Talim strode off in the opposite direction, trying to ignore the helpless screams of the city worker that she wouldn't have been able to save either way.

After the whole ordeal had ended, she entered the pet supply store at the edge of town to buy some birdseed for Alun, her bird. She inspected the shelves searching for the correct bag. She saw a bag of cockatiel seed, but Alun wasn't a cockatiel. There were also bags of parrot seed, parakeet seed, and chickadee seed, but none for Alun. She pondered for a moment. What kind of bird was Alun, anyway? Nothing in her character profile mentioned what species he was. Not even his gender. Talim, as well as Namco, knew virtually nothing about Alun. She didn't even remember what color (s)he was, even when she fed him just the previous day.

Then she remembered something else that had happened the previous day as well. She was supposed to have gone on a date with Yunsung, but he never showed up, that bastard. Every millisecond she thought about him, her rage rose. Eventually it rose to a height where she roared and kicked down the shelf, which knocked down all the other shelves as well, which knocked the pimply teenage employee onto his face. She crashed through the door, removing it from its hinges and hurling splinters of wood into the streets. A carriage rocketed through the street, collided into her and was obliterated instantly, while she walked away without a scratch. She stormed through the town, her alter ego trying desperately to regain control and bring peace back. She was officially on the warpath.

Her parade through the streets was suddenly interrupted by a previously undiscovered phenomenon that just happened to occur on this date, directly above Talim's head. As the rumbling she heard increased in volume, she tilted her head upward to the sun. She held her hand above her eyes to shield the sun's rays, and in doing so, she was able to witness what was approaching. A giant sword fell from the sky and planted itself in the ground right next to Talim's right foot. Startled, she looked up again and saw two knifes hurdling down on top of her. She somersaulted forward and dodged her impending doom. She looked up again to see more.

It was raining weapons. Swords of all other styles shot down on top of her, followed by spears, staffs, clubs, axes, whips, and just about every weapon imaginable, and they were all targeting Talim. She dashed through the raindrops of blades, staying close to the ground, rolling and crawling like an agile monkey, dodging every pint of danger.

Out of breath, she halted and turned around once the rain stopped, and viewed almost a hundred weapons of just about every type, sticking into the dirt like plants. Her jaw dropped at the sight of the aftermath of the experience. Slowly but steadily, she picked herself off the hard road and backed away from the scene. This event, however, did not calm her epic mood swing. She was still hunting for some Yunsung for dinner. Or was it supper? What did her mother call it? It was probably dinner, though, she remembered hearing her use the word supper once recently.

She stomped around town, asking people if they knew where she might find him. She noticed a red-haired girl she knew from middle school the year before, Amy. She only knew her by name, since she was two grades below Talim. She decided she and her father would be the best people to ask about Yunsung.

Talim and the girl's father both simultaneously stopped in their tracks, pivoted so that they were facing one another, and in their fury, cried, "Have you seen a young, cocky, red-haired Korean boy that needs to die a horrific death today?"

Since they asked the same question, it was evident that the man did not know. She would have to continue on with her search alone.

What seemed like an hour later, Talim sensed a strange wind coming from an alleyway. She knew the correct term was 'aura,' but she was a wind priestess, and by the Code of the Wind Priestess, she was required to use the term, 'wind' in one out of every four sentences, which is why people find her annoying in the game for using that word so many frickin' times. This wind felt highly unusual, and radiated idiocy. This was most definitely Yunsung. She knew what to do. Talim snuck into the abandoned building that Yunsung sat beside, tiptoed past the hobos sleeping inside, and up to the window, in front of which Yunsung reposed. She slid her arm out the window and around Yunsung's throat and intervened with his quiet respite by pulling her arm back to the wall, strangling Yunsung with all her force.

She heaved backwards and brought Yunsung inside, laying him on the ground for the kill. She unhooked her elbow blades from her waist and shot them into the ground, where Yunsung would have been if he hadn't moved.

After a grueling battle that you might remember from Chapter 7, Talim stood over Yunsung and screeched, "Where the f were you last night!"

Before he politely responded to Talim's sedate inquiry, the wall behind them burst into pieces; chunks of plaster flying everywhere, piling on top of the two as well as the hobos, and possibly a few others that may have entered the building at that moment. Talim listened before losing consciousness, "Ahoy ye scurvy mongrels!"

**Next Chapter: Li Long's Story**


	14. Li Long's Story

**Chapter 14: Li Long's Story**

Li Long woke up in his bed. This was an odd occurrence because he was dead. Namco killed him off at the end of Soul Edge, didn't they? Bah, Namco doesn't know crap. Still, he was certain that he had been dead for the past 7 years. Why did Namco decide to resurrect him? Oh sure, they said, "it's not confirmed that Li Long is dead or not." Well the only one person who knew for sure was Li Long, and Li Long knew that Li Long was dead. And being dead was too peaceful. He didn't have to suffer through those video game critics saying that Soul Edge was too slow and the animation in the game was poor, and that Tekken was twice as good. He wanted to be dead to avoid that criticism in later sequels (though he didn't know that the sequels were twice as good as Soul Edge).

So Namco suddenly decided that Li Long _wasn't_ dead? Do they think they're gods or something? He could deal with being a bonus character in Soul Calibur 3, since those characters have no storylines and might as well be dead, but they made him a fully playable character in Arcade Edition. So what's going on? Does he have a storyline or what? Maxi replaced him, so there was no need for two nunchaku people in a game. Li Long just wanted to stay dead! He hated confusion, and this whole deal confused the hell out of him.

Li Long squeezed the sides of his head, which ached while meditating about all this. His desire to die still burned strong. He reached for his nunchaku and flung it into his head, giving himself a concussion. There. He ought to be dead any minute now.

**Next Chapter: Siegfried's Story**

Yes, I realize this is a short chapter that has nothing to do with the rest of the fic. Sorry if you were expecting more. The next chapter will be longer.


	15. Siegfried's Story

**Chapter 15: Siegfried's Story**

Yet another beautiful day arrived for Siegfried Schtauffen, the depressed, suicidal German knight. Although he didn't usually show his depression, which had formulated after regaining his sanity from Nightmare, since he was often lively on sunny days like this one. He would usually successfully commit suicide on rainy days, however, but being the hero of the Soul Calibur series, he would return to life with the help of a Namco official that would find his carcass, and he would continue being the hero.

He moped out of bed and leaned up against the side of his dresser, still only half awake. He opened his underwear drawer and found it empty. Damn. He had forgotten to do laundry, YET AGAIN! Siegfried hated himself for being such an idiot when he forgot things like this. The only underwear in his apartment was the used pair on the floor in front of the doorway. He stared at it. That wasn't his underwear. It was obviously a lady's pair, but whose was it? He was too mentally unfit to have a girlfriend and he didn't have a fetish with these things. He would kill himself faster if he did.

He decided that he would just buy another pair of underwear at work. That's where he always bought his underwear anyway, at the Manly Store. He put on the rest of his clothes and left for work, not wearing underwear until he arrived at the mall.

He peacefully strolled down the sidewalk, but watched an odd occurrence on the way. A young Asian man, somewhere around exactly Siegfried's age, burst out of the shrubbery on the opposite side of the intersection Siegfried stood at, wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist. The ground shook underneath Siegfried's feet, and trees in the forest toppled to the ground in order as the rumbling became louder. A horde of fangirls leapt out of the forest, pursuing the Asian man, squealing at an incredibly high volume. Siegfried cupped his hands over both his ears as he watched, but to his dismay, the fangirls noticed him. They ceased staring at the Asian man and resumed their chase, now with Siegfried as their target.

Every inch the horde came closer to Siegfried seemed like a yard. He twisted his body and sprinted in the opposite direction, barely able to outrun the horde. That lucky Asian bastard got free, and Siegfried was the substitute. The fangirls at the head of the race were launching their hands at him in a grabbing motion, aiming primarily for his pants. Of all the days to run out of underwear, why the hell did it have to be today?

All he could do was keep running. No matter how tired he got, he was not going to be killed by maniac fangirls. His mouth was drying up completely. He was almost finished, but he could not stop. He just hoped that something would distract the fangirls away from him until he could get to work.

Suddenly, something seemed to distract the fangirls away from Siegfried so he could get to work. They just turned onto another road, leaving Siegfried alone to collapse to the pavement, panting rapidly after the ordeal. He figured that they were most likely going after another good-looking guy, probably better looking than him, although Siegfried found that hard to believe, since he was the prettiest girl in the land, and no one had prettier, flowing hair than him... Err… Prettiest man. Best-looking man. He's not a pretty girl. And he doesn't want to be a girl. Definitely not. He is masculine. What? Why are you looking at me like I'm lying?

After flexing his muscles and making out with a random girl in order to regain his masculinity for the earlier statement, Siegfried arrived at his workplace, the Manly Store at the mall, and bought a pair of manly underwear from the shelf in the store. He sat down behind the counter and pulled out a magazine, waiting for someone to wander through the door and buy something. He waited, and waited, and waited, until finally, an old man with a pirate hat and a long beard ambled in. Siegfried squinted at him and recognized him as the dread pirate, Cervantes De Leon. Normally, Siegfried would kill someone who once wielded Soul Edge, but he just outran a bajillion fangirls. There was no chance in Hell that he would drain his sparse remaining energy on him.

"Yaharr, would ye happen to know whar I might find me a strong soul, my good man?" Cervantes inquired, unusually polite.

Siegfried peered toward a shelf on the left side of the room, to a sign that read, 'manly souls.' "Sorry, we only have manly souls here. You might want to check if any of them could be strong at the same time, but if not, try Soul Palace on the second floor." He buried his head in his magazine again while Cervantes inspected the soul shelf. He shrugged and shook his head, then proceeded up the stairs to the second floor.

A short while later, a creepy looking bald guy stumbled up to Siegfried's counter and asked, "What do most masculine people wear these days?"

Siegfried pushed his hair back and looked at him more intently. "We only have one set of clothes here. It's what pretty much every-," he sarcastically held up two fingers with each hand, " 'cool' person wears now." He pointed to the single rack in the store, which held several of the same baggy jeans, orange shirt, white sneakers, plaid boxers, gold necklace, and New York baseball cap.

"But the Yankees suck!" the old guy whined, but then gave in and bought a set of the apparel. In this time, another customer arrived and took a chainsaw off the back shelf and stood behind the bald customer. Once the bald man left, the next customer revealed herself to be a woman, which Siegfried almost never found in the Manly Store, unless she was with her husband. She hoisted the chainsaw onto the counter, but Siegfried just stared at it, then looked up at the Japanese woman, lifting an eyebrow.

"Are you… uh… lesbian or something?"

The woman's skin turned crimson with fury. She dropped the money on the counter and stormed out of the store in a flash, not allowing a single word to leave her mouth. Siegfried buried his head in his magazine, once again.

A few minutes later, Cervantes returned to the store, this time with a limp, with his hand pressed against his ribcage, which was severely bruised. He coughed, "It's come to my attention that… ow… that the soul in yar chest is strong. Hand over yar soul ye scurvy mongrel!"

It had been a while since the fangirl incident, so Siegfried had regained his vitality and decided to withdraw his zweihander from beneath the counter. He swung the giant sword over the pirate's head; nearly removing it, but the pirate swayed to the side and ambushed the knight from the side. He wrapped his undead purple hands around Siegfried's hair and yanked it backwards. Siegfried squealed, "My pretty, beautiful hair! What have you done!" After cursing himself for losing his masculinity yet again, Cervantes kicked him in the head and into the wall behind the counter. He lost consciousness after Cervantes pulled off Siegfried's leg armor and flung it into his right temple.

**Next Chapter: Ivy's Story**


	16. Ivy's Story

Disclaimer time! I don't own Full Metal Alchemist or its characters.

**Chapter 16: Ivy's Story**

Ivy woke up with yet another hangover. She sighed with frustration and looked down at what she was wearing. Just as she expected. She was wearing the slutty leather dominatrix costume that she put on every time she was drunk. Ivy knew she needed to give up all this drinking. Every time she got drunk, she turned from her normal, sober, sophisticated, rich, British personality into a skank. She was always a skank when she was drunk, and she was drunk fifty percent of the time, therefore she was a skank fifty percent of the time. She was addicted to alcohol, she admitted, but she couldn't give it up. She wanted to become the fancy, sophisticated woman she once was, but that damn wine never let her do that.

She sat up from the carpeted floor she had slept on and knew without even opening her eyes that she wasn't in her own house. This wasn't unusual, since she snuck into houses quite often when she was heavily intoxicated. She stood up to see who owned the apartment she was in, and looked into the face of a young man, about ten years younger than Ivy, with long blonde hair, sleeping with his arms draped over the sides of the bed.

Ever silently, she tiptoed between the tall dresser and the foot of the bed and up to the window. She steadily slid the window up and extended her feet through, followed by the rest of her body. As she fell three stories down to the pavement and miraculously survived without a scratch, she couldn't help but think that she left something in the blonde guy's house.

Ivy decided to head toward the mall, where she might find a new set of overpriced clothing to wear home, since her old ones had wine stains all over them. She didn't need to go home to change, since no one seemed to notice her slutty outfit or think negatively of it. If she wore it all the way through Soul Calibur 1 and 2 without anyone making comments on it, she could wear it to a mall, right?

She entered a store called 'Fancy Shmancy Apparel co.' and immediately noticed an entire wall smothered in exact copies of her SC3 2p costume. She yanked as many outfits as she could off the wall and brought them to the checkout counter. The woman at the counter, wearing a nametag that read 'Lynette,' asked with dazed eyes and an odd, carefree smile, "Is this what you're looking for?"

"Yes, I counted. There are twelve of these here. No need to count them all." Ivy handed her the gold, but Lynette just stood there, without taking it.

"Thank you very much!" She exclaimed, bowing slightly. She still wore the same strange grin that she did moments ago. She still wouldn't take the money out of Ivy's hand.

Frustrated, Ivy shook her fist with the money and asked, "Are you going to take the money or what?" Lynette stood there with her hands folded, still smiling. "Hello?" Lynette didn't respond. Angered, Ivy chucked the coins in Lynette's face, who didn't even flinch upon one of the coins striking her eye.

As Ivy left, she could hear Lynette shout in her cheerful tone, "Farewell, good luck, please come again!"

Lugging her shopping bag filled with eleven satin outfits (she changed into one of them upon leaving the store), she strolled through the rest of the mall for her daily exercise. During her traveling, however, she saw a familiar face. One that she bore more hatred toward than anyone else she knew. Her teeth grinded against each other when it entered her view.

Her father, the dread pirate Cervantes De Leon tripped out of a store called 'Soul Palace,' empty handed. Funny. Ivy knew her father loved souls. How could he possibly leave a soul store without buying at least one soul?

Ivy hid from him in a sporting goods store. She backed up into a 3-foot wire bucket full of soccer balls. An idea shot into her mind. She picked one of the soccer balls out of the bucket, and without stepping into Cervantes' eyesight, launched it out of the store. It bashed Cervantes in his ribs and knocked him into a wall, giving him several bruises. He fell backwards onto his back and lost his hat in the process.

Ivy strafed behind a shelf to hide again. An employee tapped her shoulder. She turned around to see a muscular young man with what looked like an animal skull on top of his head, with a nametag labeled, 'Bangoo.'

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave, ma'am. We don't allow violence in the store, and we certainly don't allow our customers to throw our merchandise at pedestrians."

Ivy rolled her eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry, but I'll leave when I want."

Bangoo frowned, and with lightning speed, assembled a fully loaded pitching machine, pointing at Ivy. "If you don't leave now," he warned, "you'll get a face full of Roger Clemens. You have three seconds." Ivy didn't move.

"Three…" She contemplated for a moment, but wasn't scared of it.

"Two…" She smirked, reaching behind her back.

"One!" Bangoo shouted, and let loose a barrage of baseballs. Unfortunately, Ivy had expected softballs. But this didn't hinder her next action. She pulled her hand out from behind her and whipped her Ivy Blade/ Valentine (She still can't decide on a name. Pick one already!) out of her pocket and deflected one of the baseballs. It shot back at Bangoo, but he ducked his head and let the ball knock down a cardboard cutout of Tiger Woods.

Bangoo fired again and Ivy rolled behind another shelf. Bangoo stopped. He stealthily peered around each corner to find her, but she had just disappeared. Behind his back, Ivy leapt out and slashed at the pitching machine, slicing one of its legs off clean. It tilted sideways and Bangoo turned it back at Ivy and recommenced his bombardment. Ivy kept on running until she slid behind him, wrapped her whip-sword-thing around his neck, and catapulted him out of the store and down an escalator.

Bangoo ran back up the escalator, but since it was the down-escalator, he ended up staying in one place on the stairway, unable to return to the store. He cursed, let the escalator take him downstairs, and ran back up the up-escalator, only to find Ivy missing.

"Fudge!" he yelled, throwing his hat to the ground in frustration.

Ivy ran out the door of the mall, her bag still in hand. Cervantes was out of sight, so she was free to leave. She walked down an alley and saw a bald man throwing a tight, leather suit into a dumpster and shouting, "Burn in Hell, Abercrombie and Fitch Tight Leather Division!" then threw a lit match into the dumpster.

Ivy grinned. To ensure herself to never dress in her disgusting leather outfit again when she was drunk as well, she threw her own suit into the dumpster fire and said, "Ditto." She walked away, though she could have sworn she heard a muffled voice say something like, 'Lieutenant Papershred,' or something.

As she left the alley, she was confronted by two figures. One was short, with a blonde ponytail in back; the other was in a giant suit of armor. The short one grinned. "Hey look! This lady thinks she's an alchemist!" he laughed. Ivy lifted an eyebrow. Of course she was an alchemist. Why wouldn't she be?

The man in the armor scratched his head and said softly in a child's voice, "Brother, I don't think we're in..."

"Shut up! I'm gonna teach this lady to mess with science!" the short one interrupted, transforming his metal hand into a knife.

Ivy sighed, unsheathed Ivy Blade/ Valentine and hacked his other arm off, with little or no effort.

"Ah crap! Now I need two robotic arms!" He screamed, watching his fleshy arm tumble to the pavement. "You win this time, fake alchemist."

The boy in the armor screamed at the short one, "Ed, I don't think we're in the right universe!"

They ran off and disappeared without a trace. Ivy shrugged and tilted her head, confused. What the heck was that about?

**Next Chapter: Rock's Story**


	17. Rock's Story

Spoilers ahead! If you haven't won the game with Rock already, don't read the beginning of this chapter.

**Chapter 17: Rock's Story**

For the third night in a row, Rock woke up on the cement ground, in the outdoors. At least it wasn't raining like the first night he was here. He wasn't supposed to be here anyway.

Four days ago, Rock was swimming across the ocean… He didn't really know why. Namco just made him do that for his ending. While he was swimming, a boat mistook him for a sea monster and trapped him with a fishing net, then shipped him to the zoo, which exhibited other 'creatures' like him. Damn that video gamer for pressing the kick button when the big 'K' appeared in the corner of the screen. If the gamer hadn't done that, the fishermen would have just stated that he was the protector of the sea. Why oh why did the gamer have to press the kick button!

So now he was stuck in a cage at the zoo, with his 'buddies' in the cages next to him, Olcadan and Aeon. Don't ask how Rock knew Aeon's name. He was a lizardman who didn't speak any English. All three of them were caught around the same time, and since they were all human for the most part, they had been planning an escape for the past three days.

Since Rock woke up early, before the zoo opened, he was surprised to see someone lying on the pavement across from his cage. It was a middle-aged woman in a kimono, who was probably younger but only looked old because of the ocean of makeup smothering her face, and appeared to be sleeping on the rough ground.

The zoo opened its loud, squeaking gates and the woman suddenly woke up, picked up her umbrella and left. Where, Rock didn't know. He just watched her mysteriously disappear into the crowd. _There's something you don't see everyday._

The aforementioned crowd seemed to huddle around one specific spot. Rock peered past Aeon's cage and down the path. Aeon was poking his head out of the cage to see as well. A truck with barred windows drove in reverse up the path to an empty exhibit, blindly running over a few unfortunate pedestrians on the way.

A crew of men with blonde hair, Australian accents, safari hats, khaki shirts and short shorts ran to the back of the truck, counted to three, then pulled the door in the back open. They each lent a hand in pulling out a lizardman by the ankles and tossing it into the cage, swiftly locking it shut afterwards. The crowd applauded as one of the Steve Irwin impersonators underhanded a chunk of meat through the bars of the cage.

Rock squinted to see that the lizardman was no more than an ordinary woman, just acting like a lizardman. The crowd cheered so loud, that some of them started coughing from screaming so loud. The woman seemed to act normally again, speaking in English to the inconvincible crowd. Rock could barely make out that she was trying to tell the spectators that she was human.

Rock stopped watching after a while, since he couldn't pay attention to anything for a long period of time.

"Hey, guys!" called out a crotchety voice. Olcadan pulled himself out of a hole in the ground in his cage that he had dug the previous day. Curiously, none of the zoo staff noticed it. He hopped out with his powerful owl legs, waving a piece of parchment with his right hand. "I figured out a way to escape! Here, this…"

All three of them turned their heads to the right and down the path, having heard terrified screams from the crowd that had formerly been screaming in a happy manner. The 'lizardman' was sliding between the iron bars of the cage and into freedom.

Olcadan looked down at the parchment and tossed it over his shoulder. "Actually, that's a better idea," he cawed, mimicking the woman and sliding between the bars. Rock and Aeon both did the same.

More visitors that were running away from the fake lizardman happened to cross paths with the trio. Pretty much, all Hell was breaking loose. The entire zoo was in an uproar, innocent people being trampled by each other on the way to the zoo exit. Mothers were shielding their children from danger while fathers were rushing away to get a beer.

Rock didn't worry. He wasn't one of the spectators. He could pretty much do whatever the heck he wanted. And at that moment, he just felt like yelling 'Bangoo.' So that's what he did.

"BANGOO!" he bellowed his stentorian call that rattled the bones of every ear within a four-mile radius. Why did he constantly yell out his foster son's name? Who knows? Rock was never that smart. He can't be smart if he wears caveman clothes through the streets of sophisticated Great Britain because he thinks it's the new style, or as Paris Hilton would say, 'hot.'

As Olcadan, Aeon, and the fake lizardman departed, Rock had a decision to make. Where was his destination? With his immense size, he knocked down a wall and started down a road in a completely random direction, plowing down any unfortunate passer by that walked in front of him.

He kept pondering over his situation. He was looking for Soul Edge, but didn't know anything about it, so that wasn't something he could do. He could search for Bangoo, but he had no reason to, other than to check how he had been managing his sporting goods store. He decided to first find out where he was, anyway, but he wandered into a seemingly deserted area with only a few houses scattered around, and very few trees. It seemed quite cold in this place for some reason; he could even see his breath.

"DON'T SCREAM, WORM!" barked a deep voice from behind him. Rock turned, but only could see a giant hammer on top of a purple man's head, who grabbed him by the loincloth and flung him into a house, through a wooden wall. Chips of wood embedded themselves into the skin on Rock's back as he crashed through, landing on a kitchen table at which a family was eating, shattering it instantly. They all stared at him with their jaws hanging open like a dead man at a noose. Startled, he pushed himself off the floor and slowly, awkwardly backed away from the scene.

"Uhh, sorry…"

"Oh well," the wife of the family smiled, unusually optimistically. "I guess we'll all have to work to fix it! Let's get started, shall we?" Her two kids and husband simply stared at her in the same manner in which they had been staring at Rock just seconds ago.

Rock brushed the splinters of his back, both from the wall and the table. If he had real courage like he said he did, he would help repair the wall, but he had some business to take care of first.

Speaking of which, Rock was immediately clotheslined by his 'business' as soon as he left the vicinity of that family. He landed in the dust on his back again, but this time he rolled backward to dodge an oncoming axe that dug itself a hole in the dirt where Rock's stomach originally was. He catapulted himself up to his feet and held his club up to guard the hammerhead-axe-man's next attack.

He let his guard down when he recognized his opponent from somewhere. He couldn't quite put it.

"Say, you're that weatherman from the news show, aren't you? What's the weather going to be like today?" he asked.

"IT WILL RAIN BLOOD TODAY!" the weatherman roared, raising his axe for another attack.

"I see, what about tomorrow's weather?"

The weatherman crashed his axe down into the ground again, but this time it missed Rock completely. Rock finally noticed that the weatherman bore bony spikes lining his shoulders, which was not a feature that the real weatherman possessed. He began to question whether this weatherman was a fraud, although he did correctly predict it raining blood, since some drops of blood fell out of the sky and onto Rock's shoulder.

Oh crap! That was Rock's blood! The accurate weatherman had slashed Rock's shoulder without him noticing. He held his hands in the form of a T to signal time out, so he could nurse the wound, but the lousy sportsman weatherman refused to cooperate and swung his axe yet again.

Rock rushed forward to avoid the axe and head butted the weatherman in the chest, Zidane style. He fell to the ground on his back, kicking his left leg into the air. Rock began to walk away victoriously, only to be slammed into the ground by the weatherman. He hit his head on a rock, (ironically) and started to lose consciousness. However, he thought he heard an announcer say, "Knockout! Astaroth wins!"

**Next Chapter: Olcadan's Story**


	18. Olcadan's Story

**Chapter 18: Olcadan's Story**

Months of planning were finally about to pay off. Well, not months. More like a few days. Olcadan had finally formulated a plot for he and his 'buddies' Rock and Aeon to escape from the zoo they were stuck in. It was absolutely brilliant. The three of them would be free in less than a few hours. His heart beat increasingly faster and his stomach moved around inside him from all the excitement.

But before they launched the plan, he needed to look it over for any mistakes he may have made during writing, or for any unexpected events that could be caused by one of the phases.

_Phase 1: Silently enter Mitsurugi's house through chimney._

_Phase 2: Light bed on fire with a match, therefore lighting him on fire as well._

_Phase 3: Escape through back door and hang out at Chuck E. Cheese's for the rest of the night. _

"What the? This isn't my plan!" he exclaimed under his breath, breaking a sweat and hoping his parchment wasn't stolen by one of the other fake animals in this zoo and switched with a counterfeit. If that had happened, the zookeepers would recognize the trick by the time the thief succeeded and his strategy would fail. He rustled through the dirt and brush in his cage, frantically seeking out the parchment that the real plan was drawn out on.

He pushed all his weapons out of the way that he had spilled out of his box when the zookeepers tossed him in the cage a few days ago. He was sweating like mad now. He picked up each weapon to check for it underneath each one without luck. He squeezed the sides of his feathered head with both palms, squatting back down on the ground, trying desperately to control his breathing. He fell backwards to the ground, spreading his arms out, but he strained his neck when his head fell down into the hole he had dug to sleep in. He pulled it out of the hole and rotated his body to discover his plan lying in the bottom of the pit. Smiling ecstatically, he snatched the parchment out of the hole and positioned himself so that he sat in it, and began reading it over.

_Phase 1: All three of us dance and/or perform any secret talents we might be hiding to attract visitors._

_Phase 2: When enough visitors are lured, we stick our arms out of the cages to the nearest victim(s) and pull them closer to scare the others._

_Phase 3: Keep attacking until the zookeepers approach to pull the visitors away.  
_

_Phase 4: Don't let go until a zookeeper gets close enough for us to steal his keys and unlock the cages._

Olcadan remembered his plan being more brilliant than this, but he recognized this as his plan. He couldn't figure any flaws with it, so he was ready. Still, he wondered where that other parchment came from.

"Hey guys!" he called out in his crotchety old voice to Aeon and Rock, who were both awake by now. "I've figured out a way to escape! Here, this…"

Olcadan stopped and glanced past the other cages, where a large group of spectators had gathered and were now panicking and sprinting away from a specific cage. A woman, who was mistaken to be a lizardman, was sliding through the bars of her cage and into freedom. Olcadan looked at the bars on his own cage and finally realized that the bars were very far apart. How could he have been so blind?

"Actually, that's a better idea," he exhaled, throwing his crappy original plan over his shoulder. All three of them mimicked the woman by sliding between the bars of their cages, but not before Olcadan stuffed his weapons back into the box and lugged it through with him. The box was extraordinarily heavy. No one besides Olcadan could carry around a cardboard box filled with thirty separate weapons wherever he went, but even Olcadan still had a difficult time with it.

He hoisted the box onto the back of his neck and made off with it on shaky legs. So many people were running around screaming that Olcadan could barely move through the horde, leaving him to shoulder the 250-pound box in silence, just waiting for someone to move out of his freakin' way.

Once most of the people had cleared a path for him, he resumed on and climbed over the zoo wall, spilling his weapons yet again on the other side. He cussed loudly, to unintentionally teach the children a new word that they would most likely use in every other sentence from that day onward. He shoveled all the weapons into the box, which seemed to be tearing a bit at the corners now. He cussed loudly again, teaching the children _another_ new word that they would most likely use in every other sentence from that day onward.

Although discouraged, Olcadan was near freedom. He couldn't allow himself to stop now. He gripped the bottom of the sides of the box with both hands, and lifted it up so that it leant against his human chest, under his owl neck. He shuffled down the grassy hill and onto the roof of a small building that resided at the bottom. Apparently, he was in a relatively crowded city. He couldn't afford to make too much of a scene, or else the zookeepers would return, so he decided the rooftops would be the best way to escape.

He sprung off of the first roof and onto the fire escape on the neighboring building. He jogged up the stairs to get a higher viewpoint and hopped down onto a shorter building below. Unfortunately, he slipped at his landing and the box tore completely open. What made matters worse, was that it tore at the edge, so all of the box's contents tumbled down into the street.

"NOOO!" He screamed in mental agony. He watched his prized possessions plummet in slow motion to the pavement, where a small, Filipino girl was standing. He didn't care about the girl; she could get pummeled by all of Olcadan's weapons for all he cared, as long as they weren't damaged. He covered his giant yellow eyes, in fear. He opened them seconds later and saw that just about every weapon was sticking into the ground, and the girl was standing up a few yards away from where the incident occurred completely unharmed.

His heart pumping faster and faster, he hopped down onto the ground and inspected each and every one of his precious weapons. He yanked his zweihander sword out first. Not a scratch. Next, he pulled out his two kunai knives. They were a little dirty, but nothing extreme. He then pulled out his rod (the weapon, that is. Yes, I know what you were thinking you perv.) and held it at eye level. No damage. Everything was going smoothly so far.

He set down the first four weapons on the side of the building to keep them safe before he removed his Ivy blade from the ground. He couldn't think of a good name for his whip/sword thing, so he stole the name from an alchemist whose house he once broke into to find some cheese and crackers. After finding a small scratch on one link, he thought for a moment. How was he going to carry all these weapons without a box? He could go find a box for them, but that would leave them vulnerable to thieves, but he couldn't travel without one. This thought weighed heavily on Olcadan, and he cowered against the wall in the fetal position, moaning loudly. He felt like he was about to vomit.

He waited to calm down before he pushed himself up to continue his inspection of his weapons. However, a shadow appeared over him, and grew bigger. And bigger. And bigger, until it was big enough to cause a reader a heart attack from suspense.

Olcadan spun and looked up. A pebble fell off the roof and landed on his beak. That must have been the shadow, but he looked down and noticed another shadow. It got bigger. And bigger. And bigger, until it became big enough to leave a cliffhanger.

**Next Chapter: Aeon's Story**


	19. Aeon's Story

Disclaimer: I don't own Vault or Mr. Clean.

**Chapter 19: Aeon's Story**

Former Dr. Lt. Col. Aeon Calcos Esq. woke up in the zoo cage again. What a dream he had. He dreamt that he was dancing with a bunch of other lizardmen to Britney Spears. Dear gods, it was a nightmare. Although, he should have said that it was a 'bad dream' so the azure knight Nightmare wouldn't come over, thinking he was talking about him. But then Aeon remembered that he needn't worry about anything because Nightmare didn't speak lizardman.

Or did he…?

Or didn't he…?

Or did he…?

Or didn't he…?

Aeon hit his head on the bar of the cage to stop the cycle of "or did he"s within his brain before it evolved into the blue screen of death. He sat down and cleaned out what were once his toenails but were now claws, using what were once his fingers but were now claws. He was one of the few lizardmen that still cared about hygiene. Even the civilized, talking lizardmen usually didn't care, especially his cousin, Primus, who pretended that he was British and always walked around with a cane, monocle, top hat, and tuxedo and spoke in one of those queer voices. Gods, how Aeon hated him. Mainly due to envy, seeing as even though _he_ was a lizardman too, only Aeon was constantly chased around by villagers with torches and pitchforks. That poopoohead was probably talking with a puppy and pretending to translate it to its owner. Aeon knew Primus hadn't a clue how to speak dog. He just told everyone that to sound more sophisticated.

Anyway, Aeon, Rock and Olcadan woke up and saw that lady that you should have read about in previous chapters, then escaped into freedom. If you didn't read the last two chapters, then shame on you. Go back and read them. I'm too lazy to rewrite the entire frickin' process a third time.

So Aeon started running around, chasing the zoogoers that he recognized as villagers that at some point in time exiled him out of their towns with their household weapons. He wasn't going to eat them or anything; he just wanted to get amusement from their misfortune. Truly, the best form of laughter is from other people getting hurt.

After doubling over from laughter when one of the visitors who had taken refuge in an elephant's cage that farted in his face, Aeon crawled through the exit and into the Twilight Zone. Please, I don't need to explain what the Twilight Zone is. You've read eighteen whole chapters already.

He thought about walking home, which was only a couple of miles away, for some reason, but decided that he needed a drink more than he usually did. He hadn't had any alcohol for four days. He explored the Twilight Zone, looking for a bar of some sort, but ended up finding just a simple diner.

He nudged the door open with his head, having no free hands and holding his axe and shield in them. He looked around at everything that was now in black and white, even himself. He saw about ten uneasy individuals sitting at tables with shifty eyes.

"I believe that one of the people in this room is an alien!" one of them announced. Everyone became even more uneasy and shifty. Aeon paid no attention to this conflict and sat down by at the counter on a metal stool. The waiter handed him a menu, but Aeon already knew that he wanted scotch mixed with gin, vodka, brandy, rum and tequila.

"Rrnggnrarnnnn," he told the waiter.

"Sorry, we only have Vault, the soda that kicks like an energy drink," he said, holding up a bottle of Vault and chugging it down, then smiling in satisfaction.

"RRANARNGGRRAARRRNRRERRNNN!" Aeon screamed, shaking the waiter by the collar. Roughly translated: "I demand my scotch-gin-vodka-brandy-rum-tequila! You will serve me my scotch-gin-vodka-brandy-rum-tequila! I will not tolerate disobedience or product placement!" The sweating, heavily panting waiter dashed into the back room and left Aeon wondering how he understood Lizardman. He ruminated on it as he scrubbed out a stain on the counter with his Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, available at a grocery store near you.

The waiter returned with Aeon's drink, wiping sweat off his forehead with a towel. Aeon gritted his razor teeth as he clutched his beloved alcohol with both hands. As he poured the liquid down his throat, a bus arrived outside and opened its doors to everyone in the diner, except the waiter and Aeon himself. The diner was pretty much empty.

Aeon slammed the empty glass on the countertop. "Nrnrrrrngrer," he told the waiter.

"You finished it! Holy crap, that had enough Jesus juice to subdue Michael Jackson!"

"NRNRRRNGRER!" The waiter reluctantly carried the glass into the back room to refill it.

Aeon tapped his foot on the side of the counter while he waited. One of the former diner visitors returned, sitting next to him at the counter. He watched while the man pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket. The waiter walked back with the second drink and placed it in front of Aeon's nose, then turned to the man with the cigarette.

"What happened to the rest of the people?" the waiter asked.

"The bus drove off a cliff and exploded into thousands of pieces, leaving not a single sign of life. I'm the only survivor," he said happily. He pulled his other arm out of his jacket with a box of matches in his hand, then took his third arm out of his jacket to strike the match against the box, still holding his cigarette between his fingers with his first hand. "Yup, we Martians are gonna take over the world, starting with that bus. Muahaha."

The waiter smirked, watching the humanoid Martian light his cigarette. "That's where you're wrong. We Venusians have already taken over Texas and New Mexico! NYAHAHAHA!" he giggled, sliding his hat back and revealing a giant third eye in his forehead.

Aeon stared at both freaks, still sipping his gin-tequila-brandy thing. That explained why the waiter understood Lizardman language.

"NYAHAHAHAHA!" the Venusian continued giggling at the startled Martian.

Aeon looked at the bottom of the now empty glass. His vision was blurring a bit. He was getting a little drunk. "Nyarg!" he yelled, flinging the glass at the Venusian's giant eye. "Rereyrngnrr."

The Venusian rubbed his third eye, flinching whenever he felt the sore. "Would you mind waiting for a few minutes for a refill? I'm having an important dispute here."

"ARRNNN!" Aeon screeched. He picked his axe and shield off the tiled floor and swiftly beheaded both aliens with one horizontal swing of the axe. That's what happens when Aeon Calcos doesn't get his booze.

He stomped outside, where everything was finally back in color. He was still slightly drunk and he wobbled sideways a little bit when he walked. He couldn't see very well either, so he needed to stop somewhere to rest for a bit and to regain his senses. He stumbled over to a building made of bricks and sat at the edge of the building made of bricks and felt the urge to fall asleep there, despite it being made of bricks.

"QUACK!"

Aeon woke up from his sleep, though he hadn't fallen asleep yet. He recognized that voice. It was crotchety old Olcadan's crotchety old voice. He scrambled to his feet and rushed around the corner of the building to see what had happened. He couldn't see clearly with the glare of the sunlight, and because of the fact that he was drunk. However, he could make out Olcadan's silhouette falling to the ground between rows of weapons sticking out of the ground, and another silhouette standing over him.

That's all Aeon could see or remember.

* * *

He woke some time later in a slightly darkened room; face down on the ground, in between his legs. It was a very, very uncomfortable position. He tried to push himself up, but there was a heavy weight on his shoulders and a chain running around his chest and the weight, whatever it was, so he was stuck in that position. He heard a few voices here and there, but he couldn't understand human language as well as he used to. The only words he understood were 'remember' and his name, 'Calcos,' spoken by a rather high, feminine voice.**Next Chapter: Cassandra's Story**

Aha, so we have a clue to what's happening. Less than ten chapters left, so we're coming to a conclusion here.


	20. Cassandra's Story

**Chapter 20: Cassandra's Story**

A shoe crashed through Cassandra's bedroom window. She growled into her pillow. This happened almost everyday. And it was always one of her sister's kids, since they lived right next door. She was too drowsy to go pick it up and throw it in their faces like she did every other day.

Eventually she sighed and managed to get out of bed. She had pretty much been miserable like this for the last two years. She blamed it all on those stupid kids, Pyhrra and Patroklos. Cassandra used to love her sister Sophitia before she was married. Once she got married, everything went downhill. She loved Sophitia's husband Rothion, though. He was cool. He even made weapons specially for Cassandra to wreck the next day, free of charge, when Sophitia would just bitch to her and force her to fix it, even if she used it to destroy Soul Edge and save the world. But it was when they had kids that Cassandra started to hate her life. When they were babies, Sophitia was constantly stressing out over everything. Two screaming infants would easily ruin anyone's life, but Sophitia's entire mind was destroyed by it.

Once the kids turned two, Sophitia's personality mutated into something inhuman. Now, Sophitia tried to turn the worst situations into something positive. Normally, Cassandra would like that, but Sophitia tried to turn _everything _positive. It was unbelievably annoying. Cassandra could not stand her sister anymore. She missed the old Sophie so much, the one that would help out physically when someone was in need, the smart Sophie that thought logically to fix problems, the normal Sophie that listened to people besides her kids.

The kids now ruled over Sophitia's life. Everything Sophitia did revolved around the kids. Rothion could barely talk to his wife anymore. Cassandra felt worse for him than she did for herself, because he actually _lived_ in that house. Cassandra had begged her parents to let her move in with them so she could escape from those two tiny demons, but every time she asked, they would just say, "Now Cassie, you're a big girl now. Big girls don't live with their parents." Those bastards.

Cassandra's only time of respite was when the kids went to daycare, which was only a few days out of the month, since they were always booted out after those days had passed, at work at the bakery, which even then Sophitia lived near and often brought the kids to, and in the middle of darkest night when they were asleep and she could stare lovingly into the picture of her dream date, Braddicus Pitticus, which she kept under her pillow. But she could only dream.

And it only got worse over time. At one point, when Sophitia bought the kids milkshakes as a 'reward' when they stabbed one of Rothion's customers with his own sword, Cassandra and Rothion decided that something was seriously wrong, and took Sophitia to Dr. Henry Beemis down the mountain at the Twilight Zone. She was diagnosed with a rare disease called Extreme Optimism. Dr. Beemis explained that he had once read a good book called 'The Great Gatsby,' and then explained that there was no cure, and no one was even sure of the cause. So they were forced to live their hellish lives with Sophitia and Satan's spawn.

Ever gradually and fearfully, Cassandra shuffled to her armoire, got dressed, picked up the shoe, and made her way through her front door. She could hear the childish screeches through the thick, concrete walls. She stopped at Sophitia's front door and hesitated. Her right hand shaking, she placed it on the doorknob and pushed it open.

Almost immediately after she opened the door, she was struck in the forehead with a spoon. It seemed to stick to her head for a few seconds before slipping off.

Sophitia happily gasped, "Oh my goodness! Cassandra! What a nice surprise for you to come over today!" Cassandra came over everyday. She held up the shoe she had been holding in her left hand for the past few minutes, not saying a word. "Oh, why Cassandra, how kind of you to return Pyhrra's missing shoe! It would be oh so unpleasant if you did not return it and you stole it for yourself. The children have learned that it is wrong to steal."

"And yet they steal everyday," Cassandra mumbled in monotone, eyes half open with dark circles underneath. She meant of course, the weapons they steal from Rothion's shop and the everyday items they steal from visitors' pockets.

Pyhrra rushed up to her aunt and yanked the shoe out of her hand, then without hesitation, delivered a kick into her shin, crying, "Thief!" Cassandra already had a bruise in that spot from the previous day, when the _exact same thing_ happened involving the shoe and the kick, so it didn't hurt very much.

She spied Rothion sitting at the kitchen table with his face buried in his cereal bowl, drowning himself in the milk. Cassandra sat in the seat beside him. "Why are you doing that?" she asked.

Rothion lifted his head up about an inch above the milk and turned his head about ten degrees toward Cassandra. Milk dripping from the tip of his nose, he whined, "Please just let me die this way in peace," and clumsily dropped his head back under the milk, making a slight clang upon impact with the metal bowl.

Cassandra watched him for about thirty seconds, and he didn't remove his head from the bowl, like she expected. She placed her hand on the back of his head and tugged backwards on his hair to prevent his suicide. "Come on, you have a lot to live for. Don't make a stupid decision like this."

Eyes half open, Rothion replied, "Name one good reason I shouldn't."

"You have a wife that loves you, right?"

Sophitia entered the kitchen and with a brilliant smile exclaimed, "Oh, Patroklos just brought down another jogger with your hammer, Rothion! He's such a strong little boy, isn't he?" She grabbed Rothion's cereal bowl literally from under his nose, still full, and left for another room. Rothion flinched as his head fell to the table with a thud.

Cassandra meditated on what had just happened. "Never mind," she told Rothion.

Rothion didn't move his head off the table for a number of minutes. Cassandra was starting to think that Sophitia had given him a concussion when she pulled his bowl away and killed him, until she heard Sophitia in the other room, calling out, "Children! Come for breakfast!" Rothion immediately straightened his back, lower lip quivering and his skin paling. Cassandra did the same.

Sophitia walked in with Pyhrra and Patroklos by her side, smiling brightly as the sun. She sat the kids in their seats and cheerfully hopped to the cabinets to make some food. Patroklos stared hatefully into Rothion's eyes and Pyhrra stared hatefully into Cassandra's. Cassandra stayed perfectly still. Their vision was probably based on movement.

In an instant, and for no apparent reason, a large, shirtless dude holding a stone club and wearing a caveman uniform plowed through the kitchen wall and fell face up on the table, flattening it in a fraction of a second and sending wood splinters in all directions. Everyone in the family's jaws dropped besides Sophitia's.

The man slowly, and embarrassed, pushed himself off the ground and backed out of the house through the hole in the wall from which he entered. "Uhh… Sorry."

Sophitia just smiled and chanted in her high-pitched voice, "Oh well, I guess we'll all have to work to fix it! Let's get started, shall we?" Rothion, as well as the rest of the family lifted their heads to stare at her.

"What is wrong with you, Woman?" he screamed, cupping his hands over his scalp and rocking back and forth, more stressed than Cassandra had ever seen him. Fearing the situation would just get worse, she stood up from her chair and backed out of the house in the same fashion as the caveman wannabe.

She couldn't remember ever reentering her house, or doing anything after leaving, for that matter. She just woke up in a sort of damp, dark room, with a chain running around her stomach and around someone else with a rough back. It took her a moment to realize that she was upside down, and her feet were draped over the head of whomever she was chained to.

She squinted and looked around the room and spotted Rothion in the same position as her, chained to Sophitia, who was still grinning and humming a tune, as well as Pyhrra and Patroklos chained together in the same way, a few meters to the left of their parents. Or was it to the right? It was difficult to tell, being chained to someone upside down. Come to think of it, whom was she chained to?

"Why, Sister Cassandra! You're conscious again!" Sophitia smiled, looking between Rothion's feet on either side of her face.

"Sophitia, who is this behind me? He's kinda smelly."

"Oh, you remember our old neighbor from a few years back, don't you? Remember Mr. Calcos? You remember him, don't you, Cassandra?"

Cassandra did remember, and recalled him as a drunken, nose-picking peepeehead, as she would say as a child. "Aeon? Didn't he transform into a lizardman?"

"Why yes, Cassandra, indeed! You have such a splendid memory! I'm so proud to be your sister!"

So Cassandra was chained to a six-foot lizard. No wonder he was rough and smelly. What else unusual could happen?

**Next Chapter: Sophitia's Story**


	21. Sophitia's Story

Hey kids, what time is it? Disclaimer time! I don't own Disney or Twister.

**Chapter 21: Sophitia's Story  
**

Wow! Yet another bright, sunshiny day had arrived for Sophitia! Joy!

Sophitia sprang out of bed, got dressed and pulled the windows open, letting the birds chirp on the windowsill. She skipped to the opposite side of her bed and shook her husband Rothion awake.

"Wake up, my gladiator! Wake up! It's such a fine day to just be inside sleeping!" She pranced out the bedroom door and down the hall.

* * *

Rothion woke up to Sophitia's irritating voice. He would never get up if it were his choice. He had barely gotten four hours of sleep with the kids screaming in the next room all night. He had to continue lying in bed with the covers over his head. "Just keep away from here, just keep away," he mumbled under his breath to the children. If he truly thought the kids would hear such a faint call, he was an idiot. But of course, he would yell it if he wanted the Hell creatures to hear him.

* * *

"Wake up! Children! Wake up, children, wake up!" Sophitia sang with her Disney-esque voice. "Time to play, children, it's time to plaaaaay!" She pushed open the doors to the children's rooms to wake them up, before dancing to the living room. "We have games to play, chores to do, friends to meet, and a day to enjooooooy!"

* * *

Rothion hated his 'wife's' horrid singing voice. He hated Disney. He hated their voices. All of them, Cinderina, Aerial, Crow White, Sleeping Cootie, he hated them all. They should have just quit their careers when they had the chance.

"Just keep away from here, just keep away," he continuously mumbled to no one. He turned over in bed and pressed his pillow against his ears. However, by now the noise the kids had been making fully awakened him, and he would have to get out of bed sooner or later, whether he liked it or not.

* * *

"Well children, what would you like to play today?" Sophitia chirped. 

"I WANNA PLAY TWISTER!" Pyhrra screeched.

"I WANNA PLAY PULL-DADDY-OUT-OF-BED-AND-KICK-HIS-ASS!" Patroklos screeched.

"Both of your ideas are splendid!" Sophitia gasped with joy, clapping her hands. "We shall play both! Let us play Twister first, then Pull-Daddy-Out-Of-Bed-And-Kick-His-Ass when we are finished!" She rushed into another room to find the Twister game. It was hidden between a painting Pyhrra made in daycare of herself slaying the other children in the class with Rothion's axe and Patroklos' secret marijuana stash. She yanked the box out and pranced back to the living room in which the kids would play.

"My my! You two little angels were so good and quiet while I was in the other room! I didn't hear a peep out of either of you."

* * *

Rothion, with a blanket draped over his back to protect him from the child menace, stealthily tiptoed to his dresser to get changed. "Oh Hephaestus," he prayed. "Please, don't let them hear me. Don't let them hear me, Hephaestus, please…" 

"Why would that man think I was in charge of stealth?" Hephaestus boomed to himself in the Heavens. "I'm the god of fire and weapons. I have nothing to do with stealth. That's a totally different god. Jeez, what a weirdo. He worships us and doesn't even know our purposes."

As he reached for the drawer, he heard a slamming noise coming from the living room. Immediately, Rothion jumped and slid under the bed to hide. The kids were about to play a game with Sophitia like they did everyday. Sophitia must have gone to the game closet and left the two hell spawns to themselves. He listened to the kids, hoping they weren't coming to his room. They seemed to be arguing and throwing things at each other.

"TWISTER'S BETTER!" one of them squealed.

"PULL-DADDY-OUT-OF-BED-AND-KICK-HIS-ASS IS BETTER!" cried another.

"My my! You two little angels were so good and quiet while I was in the other room! I didn't hear a peep out of either of you," he heard his wife's voice enter. Silence came once again. He crawled out and continued his perilous quest to get dressed.

* * *

"Now children, if you want to play Twister, you must remove your shoes. It says so on the box, see?" Pyhrra kicked her shoes off and hurled them in a random direction. One of them successfully shot through a window and through the window of the house next door, which belonged the their aunt Cassandra. She would probably come over soon to give it back. Patroklos mimicked her, but didn't get any of his shoes to cause violence and/or destruction, as he would have liked. 

While they played, their eyes pivoted around the corner to watch Rothion tiptoeing into the kitchen, shivering when he realized whom they were staring at with their fiery red eyes. Rothion took a deep breath and entered the kitchen, where he poured himself a bowl of Fruitus Loopus cereal that he would eat alone.

But unfortunately, as he expected, he would not be left alone to eat. Patroklos stomped into the kitchen, yanked the spoon out of his father's hands and pushed his head into the bowl with his brutish strength. Rothion sighed and decided the best thing for him to do was to drown himself to death in the milk. He didn't care what Patroklos needed the spoon for, and frankly didn't want to know.

The front door opened and Cassandra walked in with Pyhrra's missing shoe. Patroklos had been waiting behind a wall for her to enter so he could launch his plot of misfortune and hurl the spoon at her face. It stuck to her forehead, wet with milk. To his dismay however, she didn't seem to take much notice, and just remained in place until the spoon slid off and onto the floor.

Sophitia turned to face her visitor and gasped, "Oh my goodness! Cassandra! What a nice surprise for you to come over today!" Cassandra silently held up Pyhrra's shoe. "Oh, why Cassandra, how kind of you to return Pyhrra's missing shoe! It would be oh so unpleasant if you did not return it and you stole it for yourself. The children have learned that it is wrong to steal." Cassandra muttered something under her breath as Pyhrra rushed up to her aunt and yanked the shoe out of her hand, then without hesitation, delivered a kick into her shin.

"Thief!" Pyhrra cried. Sophitia was too busy folding up the Twister game to realize that her daughter did harm unto her sister, but she probably wouldn't have done anything about it anyway. Cassandra, eyes barely open, shuffled into the kitchen and sat at the chair across from Rothion.

Sophitia finished cleaning up the game, which took longer than most people take to fold a simple plastic pad. She stood up and looked outside to see Patroklos running outside from the workshop, swinging Rothion's hammer at completely random pedestrians. She grinned at how strong her son was without knowing. Pyhrra, with shifting eyes, walked up to her and whispered, "Mommy, get me some milk. Now."

"Why of course, Pyhrra! I'd be glad to! Milk is nutritious for you!" Sophitia leapt into the kitchen for some milk and reported to Rothion, "Oh, Patroklos just brought down another jogger with your hammer, Rothion! He's such a strong little boy, isn't he?" She noticed that Rothion was wasting the milk in his cereal bowl for another suicide attempt. No use in wasting that good milk, right? Sophitia wrapped her fingers around the bowl and ripped it out from under her husband's nose. She walked over to Pyhrra and handed her the milk in the bowl. "What do you say?"

"F**(censored)** you!" Pyhrra shouted. Sophitia mistook the curse for the word 'thank,' so she made no comment on her language. Pyhrra dashed outside and dumped the milk all over the injured jogger, on top of whom Patroklos stood, holding the hammer victoriously over his head.

Sophitia remembered that the children hadn't eaten all morning. She called out the front door, "Children! Come for breakfast!" The three walked into the kitchen where Sophitia sat the kids down in their chairs and happily hopped to the cabinet to fix up something to eat.

Then the guy you read about in the previous chapter crashed through the wall and left and Sophitia made that optimistic remark. Yes, I am very lazy.

A little after Cassandra left, Sophitia heard the back door open and heard footsteps becoming louder. "Oh good! That must be the babysitter!" Then like everyone else in this story, the four of them fell unconscious.

Boy, I'm getting kinda tired of writing all this repetitive stuff.

**Next Chapter: Edgemaster's Story**


	22. Edgemaster's Story

**Chapter 22: Edgemaster's Story**

Evil was afoot. The old master could smell it with his aging blood. An evil plot was brewing. He had to warn his allies before they became the next victims.

The old hermit pushed himself out of bed and started to get dressed. He had to hurry. Whatever this evil force was, it was coming fast.

Then the narcolepsy kicked in, and he fell asleep standing up before he could get his pants on.

**Next Chapter: Zasalamel's Story**

Yeah, another short chapter. Next one is going to be a longer one, I promise.


	23. Zasalamel's Story

Since the story is coming to a close in a few chapters, I've been saving this one for the end. This is gonna answer a lot of previously unsolved mysteries.

**Chapter 23: Zasalamel's Story**

Zasalamel, the crazy, weird, suicidal, sorcerer dude or whatever he was, didn't get any sleep at all. He had been sitting alone at the edge of the stage at the bar he performed at the previous night, thinking things over. He stared at the blood spilled on the wood floor through his fingers cupped over his face.

"What have I done?" he asked himself. He could have answered the question, because he knew what he had done. So why was he asking himself a question to which he already knew the answer? I dunno, he's a crazy, weird, suicidal sorcerer dude.

_Flashback to the previous night!_

It was a Friday night; the night Zasalamel usually was paid money with which to buy stuff for the rest of the week. He was to perform his world famous magic act, or rather, the magic act that not that many people knew about. A popular bar/grill in Downtown Twilight Zone called Flight 33 sent him an email asking him to perform his magic act for big bucks. How did he get an email, centuries before computers were invented? I dunno, he's a crazy, weird, suicidal sorcerer dude.

Zasalamel agreed to perform and arrived early to set up and to advertise to the people there that there was going to be a show that evening. A larger than normal group gathered in front of the stage, sitting in rows of chairs and tables. Zasalamel was quite excited. Rarely did he get a crowd this big.

When the time was right, he made his appearance on stage. After a few standard acts, he had gotten most of the crowd hooked. Then came the hypnosis act. This was where everything went downhill.

"I'm going to need a few volunteers for this one. Who's willing to come up?" he asked after his pulling-a-magic-hat-out-of-a-rabbit act. He spotted a young, cocky, red-haired Korean boy in the fourth row raising his hand and waving it around with a cocky grin across his face. He then grabbed the arms of his two friends at his table and pulled them up, forcing them to go on stage along with him. "Fine, you three, come on up."

The three Koreans stood on stage but only the red-haired one looked happy about it. The other two seemed to stare at him hatefully.

"Now, you Sir, what is your name?" Zasalamel asked.

"Hwang…" the older Korean man said softly.

"Hwang, eh? Is that your name or a dirty joke?" The audience burst out laughing, so loud it hurt the eight ears of the people on stage. "…Jeez, it wasn't _that_ funny," Zasalamel muttered.

Once the audience calmed down, Zasalamel started again. "Now Hwang, stare into my pocket watch intently." Hwang obeyed. "When I snap my fingers, you will be…" He thought of something to trick him into acting as. "A woman who falls in love with the first man she sees!" He thought of something to make him snap out of it later. "You will be Hwang again when someone says…"

"How do I get out of here?" a bored spectator yelled.

"When someone says the words, 'how do I get out of here."

Zasalamel snapped his fingers. Hwang looked towards the bar and spotted a drunken Asian man with a staff. "They call it a rod," he slurred. "So why don't they just call my staff a penis?"

Hwang jumped down and walked over to him. "Heya hunk, how about you come over to my place and have a good time?" He dragged the Asian man out the door, saying, "I'm gonna get you a tattoo that says 'you and me forever' in Korean." The Asian was too drunk to try to resist.

The crowd watched and applauded.

"Okay, now what is your name, young man?" Zasalamel asked the cocky one.

"My name's Yunsung, and I'm the most powerful swordsman in the whole wide world!" The audience burst out laughing again. "Why is everyone laughing?"

"Okay Yunsung, stare into my pocket watch intently." Yunsung obeyed. "When I stab you with my scythe, you will be… a dead person!" Zasalamel took the pocket watch away and shoved it into his pocket.

"So when am I gonna pretend to be dead?"

Zasalamel tiptoed off stage and came back swinging his scythe. He thrust it through Yunsung's back, letting it puncture out through his chest. He removed it and let him fall to the ground.

"When I snap my fingers, you will be alive again!" Zasalamel snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. He snapped again. Nothing happened. He snapped again. Nothing happened. He hesitated and dragged Yunsung back stage temporarily.

"He's not healing," he whispered to a stage guy. "What do we do?"

"I'll just throw him in the dumpster out back. He'll heal in the morning, though he'll wake up in a dumpster. But who cares? He's a cocky punk. No one will care."

Relieved, Zasalamel returned on stage. "He's okay, everyone!" The crowd applauded. He turned to the final volunteer. "And what is your name, Miss?"

"Uh… Are you sure Yunsung's okay, because if he's not, then my dad's gonna burn down my house."

"He's fine, now what's your name?"

"Uh, Mina."

"Okay, Mina, stare into my pocket watch intently." Mina obeyed. "When I snap my fingers, you will be… A lizardman! And you will snap out of it when… you hear someone cough or wheeze." Zasalamel snapped his fingers.

Then Mina went insane, killing almost everyone in the audience with her zanbatou, snarling like a lizardman. Zasalamel's jaw dropped in astonishment as more and more people died because of his actions. "Oh… Snap," he whispered to himself, standing in horror, unable to move. He felt like he was about to puke. He could no longer see Mina; just the corpses on the ground and an open door through which she probably escaped.

_End of flashback!_

After that catastrophe, he just sat at the edge of the stage for the entire night, horrified at himself for being so stupid. Hours passed before morning came and he was able to tear his body away from the stage, gather his scythe and his 'My First Magic Kit' and leave for his home.

After walking for a long distance, he pushed his front door open and carelessly dropped his scythe and magic kit on the floor. He let out a sigh and started up his stairway. He headed toward the bathroom to clean up after the night.

He turned the sink on and opened the glass medicine cabinet and pulled out an electric shaver, another device that didn't exist in his time era, and began cutting off his beard that grew overnight while he was pondering over things. He looked down, watched the hair stream down the drain and turned the water off. He sighed again, put away the shaver and pulled out a toothbrush and toothpaste. As he brushed his teeth, he thought he heard a voice moaning. He began to get nervous that he was being watched, so he stopped and spit into the sink. He was beginning to sweat. He reached underneath the cabinet and pulled out a sweat rag that he used in times like these. He wiped his forehead and his sweaty palms, and rung the rag out over the sink. He tossed the rag back under the sink and began to cough violently. He felt very sick now.

Without warning, a man burst out from the cabinet under the sink and crawled up to the door. So there _was_ someone watching him. Before he could leave, Zasalamel grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and looked him in the face. He suddenly recognized the intruder. It was Hwang.

"Wait, you're the guy from last night, aren't you? Yeah. What would you be doing here?" He thought for a moment. What could make Hwang come to his house? He pulled his pocket watch that he had used from his pant pocket and inspected it. He figured it out. He had used his own pocket watch for the magic act instead of the magic company's pocket watch, which was modified to force the hypnosis victim to stay within a certain area. The reason for this modification was that most hypnosis victims retreat directly to the home of whoever owned the pocket watch that was used, and in this case, went straight to Zasalamel's house, because that's whose pocket watch was used. "I must've used my own instead of the company one. Yes, that would make you come here."

While Zasalamel was talking to himself, Hwang opened the door, zipped into his bedroom, and escaped out the window. Zasalamel then realized that his sink was leaking. Boy, what a horrible day he was having.

The sink was very easy for a crazy, weird, suicidal sorcerer dude to fix. It only took about fifteen minutes. During this time, Zasalamel had heard a loud commotion outside his house. Curious, he walked down the stairs and stepped outside the front door. He immediately realized what had been going on.

Running down the street, he saw Siegfried Schtauffen, the former wielder of Soul Edge, being pursued by a legion of drooling fangirls. He expected the horde to stop when the knight turned the corner, but instead, they headed straight for Zasalamel, distracted from their original chase!

Zasalamel was not a fast runner. He would never be able to outrun them. Frantic for a plan, he did the one thing he could do to avoid being horribly maimed by the horde. He used his crazy, weird, suicidal sorcerer powers and in an explosion of light, transformed into Abyss.

Zasalamel/Abyss opened a portal into the ninth dimension using his Irkalla scythe, into which all the fangirls stumbled. Before they could return and wreak more havoc, he sealed the portal to prevent them from ever coming back.

Zasalamel/Abyss looked at his hands, then his feet, then the rest of his horrible, disgusting monster body. "AUGH!" he screamed in a warped voice. "I thought doing this would give me power, not turn me into an ugly, skull faced monster with six rows of teeth! This is disgusting! I want to be human again!" Boy, was he having a horrible, horrible day.

**Next Chapter: Cervantes' Story**

There you have it. Hope that filled a lot of gaps. Only five chapters left, so all the previously unanswered questions will be answered during this time.


	24. Cervantes' Story

**Chapter 24: Cervantes' Story**

Somehow, by some miracle, the dread pirate Cervantes De Leon found himself working for _Nightmare._ Of all the people in the world, how the hell did he end up working for _Nightmare?_ What in the universe could possibly persuade Cervantes to work for _Nightmare? _Not even the author of this story had any freakin' clue how this happened, but one thing was for sure, Cervantes was working for _Nightmare!_ How the hell did this happen?!

The only order Cervantes remembered swam around in circles in his mind; the words Nightmare had spoken to him: "Find strong souls and put them in this bag." If these souls would belong to Cervantes at the end of the job, he would gladly take part in whatever Nightmare had planned, but Cervantes had an infinite number of doubts about that, and an infinitely small number that he was actually going to be allowed to keep the souls. How did he end up working for Nightmare again?

He didn't pay attention to where he was walking, but he hadn't a specific destination in mind, anyway. He found himself standing in the lower level of a shopping mall, in front of a store called 'The Manly Store.' He shrugged. Maybe this shop would sell souls manly enough to be strong souls. It was definitely worth a shot.

Cervantes pressed forward and stopped at the counter to speak with the pretty, beautiful, blonde male cashier. "Yaharr, would ye happen to know whar I might find me a strong soul, my good man?"

The cashier peered toward a shelf on the left side of the room, to a sign that read, 'manly souls.' "Sorry, we only have manly souls here. You might want to check if any of them could be strong at the same time, but if not, try Soul Palace on the second floor." Cervantes inspected the soul shelf. He concentrated, but didn't sense any strength from any of the souls that would be worthy to be devoured. He shrugged and shook his head at the cashier, then proceeded up the stairs to the second floor as he had suggested before.

He stepped onto the escalator and waited for it to reach the second floor. It seemed unusually slow, especially for someone impatient as Cervantes. He ascended the staircase by himself so he could get his business finished more quickly. He turned left upon arriving at the second floor and kept his eyes peeled for 'Soul Palace.' It was on his right, with large, glowing green letters that brought out the importance of the store for his mission.

He entered and approached the cashier, a woman in a bar wench uniform with horrible, mutated, giant breasts that made Cervantes question why most men enjoy staring at such ridiculously ugly objects. Cervantes was straight, but this was ridiculous.

"Welcome. Are you looking for anything in particular?" The woman asked. Cervantes looked at her nametag, labeled, 'Valeria.'

"Uh, Malaria, er, Valeria, what kind of a scurvy name is that?" Valeria stood still without response, as if programmed by some sort of video game company to respond only to certain questions. Cervantes continued, "Do ye sell any strong souls here, yarr?" Again, Valeria didn't respond, leaving him to search for himself.

He passed by every shelf, glaring at every item with determination and felt no strength from any of them. He snarled. Frustrated, he stormed out of the store empty handed, his eye twitching. At this rate, his mission would never be finished. "Good speaking to you. Please come again," Valeria spoke from behind him.

He continued walking through the mall, but suddenly realized something. The cashier from the Manly Store was a strong soul. He didn't recognize him at first because he radiated such beauty and prettiness. It was Siegfried Schtauffen, the former wielder of Soul Edge, a perfect specimen for Nightmare.

Deep in thought, Cervantes faltered and was pegged hard in the ribs by a soccer ball. The impact pushed him into a cement wall, thereby adding to the injury. He looked toward where the weapon had come from- a sporting goods store, but saw no one within two hundred feet. He would have to skip on punishing the infidels for now. He had to bag Siegfried first.

Cervantes pushed himself off the floor with his left hand, his right hand covering the spot at which he was struck. The ball left a large bruise on Cervantes' torso, and also gave him a limp. It hurt to walk. But he put more and more effort into his steps and finally managed to confront Siegfried twenty minutes later. He coughed, "It's come to my attention that… ow… that the soul in yar chest is strong. Hand over yar soul ye scurvy mongrel!"

Siegfried gave a reply in the form Cervantes expected. He withdrew his zweihander from beneath the counter and swung it over the pirate's head; nearly removing it, but the pirate swayed to the side and ambushed the knight from the side. He wrapped his undead purple hands around Siegfried's hair and yanked it backwards. Siegfried squealed, "My pretty, beautiful hair! What have you done!" Smirking, Cervantes kicked him in the head and into the wall behind the counter. Siegfried lost consciousness after Cervantes pulled off his leg armor and flung it into his right temple.

The epic battle, which lasted four seconds, violently ripped Cervantes' remaining energy out from his decaying body. He coughed and gripped his side in pain. Eventually, he caught his breath and stuffed Siegfried's limp body into the enormous leather garbage bag Nightmare had lent him. Cervantes dragged his catch out of the mall and strolled in no particular direction, as before.

He concentrated on any radiation of soul power as he cautiously walked through the Twilight Zone. It took a while to find a strong soul, squatting in front of a brick wall and aiming a crossbow at a house atop the hill across from it. He would be a great prize for Nightmare, but he was quite obviously a pirate like Cervantes, and under pirate code, he was not allowed to steal another pirate's soul. However, a soul like that must know other souls similar.

Cervantes approached, showering the other pirate with his shadow. The crossbow wielder lowered his weapon and tilted his head upward to meet Cervantes' eyes. "Ahoy, would ye know warrr I'd find a strong soul?" he asked, rubbing the bruise on his ribs.

"What do you mean?" the pirate asked.

"Errm, yarr. Do ye know any souls that be strong?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. What would constitute a strong soul?"

"Arrr…" Cervantes paused, thinking to himself how to explain it to a dumbass like this one. He noticed an arrow embedded in the brick wall, and sensed a very large presence from within, as if the arrow was pointing directly to the source. Two strong souls, possessed by anger, even better. There, his prey stalked. "Thar be two in here!" he exclaimed, yanking the arrow out of the building with all his might. The brick wall collapsed upon having the arrow removed. Pieces of brick and plaster scattered everywhere. Cervantes pushed through the rubble and spotted the two he had sensed earlier. "Ahoy, ye scurvy mongrels!" he cried out, pulling their bodies out from under the destruction.

As he bagged his victims, he sensed a whopping group of four more strong souls within the premises. He scanned the area of any life, and located the bodies of a ronin, a kunoichi, a little red-haired girl, and a nationality-confused man, all with high soul power, and all lying together where the entrance to the building once stood. Bonus!

Cervantes stuffed all of them into the bag, but couldn't fit much more. It was getting heavy even for him. This was enough for now. He would have to trek back to Nightmare to trade in the souls for whatever Nightmare was going to reward him with, if anything at all. Cervantes expected Nightmare would give him nothing more than a long lecture about how he's so awesome and how he would one day conquer the world after devouring every soul on the planet and how he loves garlic bread so much.

**Next Chapter: Astaroth's Story**


	25. Astaroth's Story

**Chapter 25: Astaroth's Story**

_SMASH!_

There wasn't much going on in Astaroth's dinosaur sized mind besides the first word in this chapter. His head was a desolate wasteland and his brain was as dead as George W. Bush's.

He paraded through the Twilight Zone, plowing through any humans, aliens, creatures, or hallucinations native to the Twilight Zone. He didn't care about anything other than a strong soul in the tiniest way.

_STRONG SOULS FOR MR. NIGHTYMARE!_

Astaroth raged up the mountain, the ground crumbling under his mammoth weight that he never thought to burn off on the treadmill. He eyed a man standing on the horizon with the same silhouette as Astaroth. He rampaged a little closer. It was that guy that he was modeled after, the White Giant guy. Astaroth mad! Astaroth kill!

"DON'T SCREAM, WORM!" he barked. The White Giant turned, and Astaroth grabbed him by the loincloth and flung him into a house, through a wooden wall. Chips of wood shot in random directions as he crashed through, landing on a kitchen table at which a family was eating, shattering it instantly. Astaroth watched intently as the White Giant brushed the splinters of his back, both from the wall and the table. As he left what was left of the house, Astaroth hastily clotheslined him the moment he set foot on the dirt. He landed in the dust on his back again, and Astaroth raised his axe for another blow, but he rolled backward to dodge it and it dug itself a hole in the dirt where the White Giant's stomach originally was. He catapulted himself up to his feet and held his club up to guard Astaroth's next attack.

The White Giant let his guard down temporarily and looked at Astaroth as if he recognized him.

"Say, you're that weatherman from the news show, aren't you? What's the weather going to be like today?" he asked.

"IT WILL RAIN BLOOD TODAY!" Astaroth roared, raising his axe for another attack.

"I see, what about tomorrow's weather?"

Astaroth crashed his axe down into the ground again, and slashed his shoulder. Blood spurted into the air and onto the ground. It did indeed rain blood today. The White Giant held his hands in the form of a T to signal time out, so he could nurse the wound, but Astaroth, still brain dead, didn't recognize the signal and swung his axe yet again.

The White Giant rushed forward to avoid the axe and head butted Astaroth in the chest, Zidane style. He fell to the ground on his back, kicking his left leg into the air. He began to walk away victoriously, but Astaroth pushed himself off the ground and knocked his enemy onto the ground and into a rock, where he started to lose consciousness.

Astaroth bellowed victoriously, holding his axe over his head and jumping up and down, creating an earthquake. He grabbed the White Giant and stuffed him into Mr. Nightymare's special bag he had generously lent him for the day.

He slid back down the mountain on his belly with the bag o' souls on his back. He destroyed anything that chose its location to be in Astaroth's path. At the bottom of the mountain was a strong soul, a Korean woman, only half conscious after being tossed out of a doctor's office. Astaroth loudly tiptoed over to her and kicked her in the face. Easy catch. He stuffed her in the bag and went on his way again, but not without grabbing an unsuspecting Rod Serling and punching his head into the ground.

He turned a corner and saw two more Koreans for him to kill. Err, stuff in the bag.

"A golem!" one of them screamed before fleeing. Astaroth couldn't catch up with him, so he just grabbed the older looking one by the throat and swung his body around in circles until he was knocked out.

"SQUIRM! SCREAM! SCUM! SKUNK! SCRIBBLE! SCORE!" he roared.

He stuffed the unconscious man in the bag and counted how many souls he had collected.

"One… Nine… SIX! I HAS SIX SOULS FOR MR. NIGHTYMARE!" Astaroth happily hopped away back to Mr. Nightymare, knowing that he asked specifically for at least six souls or else no reward.

**Next Chapter: Tira's Story**

Okay, sorry for the shortness. There really wasn't much to this chapter, so it was kinda rushed. Hopefully the final three chapters will be longer and more interesting.


	26. Tira's Story

**Chapter 26: Tira's Story**

A new assignment for Nightmare always excited Tira. She'd do anything for her dream date, that hunky, sexy, gentle, _**evil, conniving,** _honest, sweet, _**lying scumbag.** _Tira tried to control her alternate personality from taking over. Either way, she had to suppress it and leave only one or two personalities for the mission. That's right, Tira was not actually schizophrenic. She was octoschizophrenic. She had eight split personalities, though two of which were actually seen in Soul Calibur 3, and were the most abundant personalities.

She had to concentrate on her mission. Her hubby asked her nicely to find at least six strong souls for him and to bring them in a giant leather bag, and out of her, Astaroth and Cervantes, the one who had the most souls would receive a 'reward.' She could only imagine what it could be.

Her first stop of the morning was a zoo. There were about five strong souls in the vicinity, and she could sense it. If only she could actually find them.

She noticed three cages side by side, each of which contained something that wasn't an animal. She laughed sadistically at their misfortune and started to make fun of them from the top of a restroom she was standing on as a lookout point. It was made of toy Lincoln logs and couldn't take more than a hundred pounds of weight. You probably guessed it, that the restroom collapsed under Tira's feet.

Everyone within ten yards laughed sadistically at her misfortune and started to make fun of her from the top of restrooms they were standing on as lookout points. Enraged, Tira took her ringblade out of her pocket, or wherever she was hiding it, and killed everyone in various ways.

Only then did she realize that chaos was erupting for a reason other than her mass murder spree. Oh, did she feel the strong souls now. They were flowing in like a school of fish. There was no way she'd be able to capture all of them in time, however, so she aimed for one at a time. She pushed people to her sides while charging through the crowd and located a woman in a kimono radiating plenty of power. As she started to bag her, the woman elbowed Tira in the nose. Enraged, she backhanded the woman with the strength of a golem, immediately knocking her out.

By the time she finished bagging the woman, the other souls she sensed were gone. She still had time to chase after the closest one. She leapt over the zoo wall and raced after it.

She was much faster than her target and was able to catch up with it within moments. Swooping down on her prey, she found that it was an old man with an owl head. She dove off from a rooftop and landed on his shoulders. Before he could realize what had happened, she kicked him in the head hard enough to give a concussion and stuffed the body in the leather bag. She looked around at the odd scene of dozens of weapons sticking out from the ground in the street. As she ventured through the maze of weapons, a lizardman stumbled toward her, seemingly unaware of her presence. It radiated great power. She grinned devilishly, snickering under her breath. She balanced her ringblade on the ground, and with her hands clenched at the top, swung her body through the center. She landed on the lizardman's shoulders and with the same method, knocked him out with a swift kick to the cranium. Another point for Tira. She was on a roll.

She picked up her pace and jogged up a mountain. She sensed a very large group of strong souls packed in a small area up there. The trail led her to a small house. She counted five in this area. With stark silence, she kicked down the door, which exploded upon falling on the floor inside. Well, maybe she wasn't so silent after all.

She had to act fast. She pounced onto her first target, a young woman with short, blonde hair. The woman grabbed a metal shield from under a destroyed table and swung it at Tira. Tira grabbed it and yanked it out of her hand, then hit her in the head with it. She stood over her unconscious opponent and saw four other faces staring in her direction.

"Ah, you must be the new babysitter! Please, have a seat and I'll get you some breakfast!" an unusually cheerful housewife smiled.

A man with long sideburns looked at Tira with tired eyes and whispered, "Please, do that to me next."

Tira grinned widely and obeyed. She hit him over the head with the shield and did the same to the housewife and their two screeching kids. She stuffed all five victims into her now nearly overflowing bag.

One more stop she had to make. She felt four presences now, in a house atop a hill. She made her way up through the tall grass to the back of the house and quietly cut a hole in a window with her ringblade. The window shattered upon touching the blade. Again, Tira needed to work on her stealth methods.

She ran up the stairs and attacked. She grabbed an old, wrinkly fellow in gangsta clothing by the ankle and threw him at a couple of younger Asians sitting on a couch with all the might left in her body. Catching her breath, she looked at the three bodies on the floor. She could have sworn there were four people here.

She sat down for a while at the couch to rest for the long journey back to Nightmare with a bag full of eleven sleeping souls. She knew it would take a long time to finish this task, but it would all be worth it. Nightmare was a man of his word, right?

…Right?

**Next Chapter: Nightmare's Story**

This feels so rushed. Sorry peoples. But there are only two chapters left, so I'm ready to get this over with and move on to other things.


	27. Nightmare's Story

Disclaimer: I don't own Apple or its products.

**Chapter 27: Nightmare's Story**

Nightmare was bored. He was just sitting there in his throne, and… not doing anything. Just… waiting. Maybe he could listen to his ipod, but that didn't exist yet, so that was out of the question. Boy, was he bored. He was just waiting for his followers to come back with his meal.

He went over his plan in his mind. That morning he told Astaroth, Cervantes, and Tira to go out and find at least six strong souls each, then to bring them back to him. His theory was that rather than going around consuming random souls one at a time like he usually did, if he were to consume a large number of especially strong souls at the same time, it would give him an immense burst of power that would last long enough for him to consume even more souls from a large radius. If he were to consume so many souls this way, his power would increase much more rapidly and would lead to the eventual destruction of Earth. Once that happened, he would move onto the next solar system and start consuming alien souls. He prayed to Satan that his plan would work.

But still, what to do in the mean time? They wouldn't be back until later in the day, so what would he do for these few hours? He suddenly remembered something. He promised a reward to whoever captured the most souls for him. He wasn't sure what that prize was. He had to think of something to give to the winner. A shiny new soul for them to eat? Hell no. Nightmare would rather kill all three of those losers than do that.

Nightmare sighed. He didn't like thinking. He liked taking unnecessary actions like killing a bajillion people after stampeding into a random village. Maybe he would just take a nap for the time being…

Nightmare woke up to Astaroth's loud footsteps echoing through Osterhiensburg Castle. Er, Othreinsburg… Or was it Otsreinburg? Beersteinsburg?

Astaroth paraded up to Nightmare with his bag of strong souls. "I GIVE MR. NIGHTYMARE SIX STRONG SOULS! MR. NIGHTYMARE GIVE ASTYROTH GIFT!" Astaroth poured out three unconscious bodies from his bag. Nightmare slapped his forehead.

"Astaroth, you bumbling fool! That's three! I can't believe that cult didn't teach you to even count! ARG! If Tira and Cervantes don't make up for your loss, your soul will be mine!"

"SQUIRM! SCREAM!" he wailed as he ran through a wall.

Cervantes and Tira arrived almost simultaneously. Cervantes poured seven souls from his bag and Tira poured out eleven. Astaroth's ass was saved, and this was more than enough Nightmare would need. Cervantes walked down another corridor but Tira remained in her place, smiling from ear to ear and staring at Nightmare.

"What?… Oh, you wanted a reward, right?"

Tira nodded excitedly. Nightmare pondered, searching through his head for an idea. He stopped searching through his mind and searched through his pocket and pulled out a chunk of garlic bread from who knows how many weeks ago.

"Here's your prize, now… begone." Tira suddenly was fuming, steam shooting out of her ears.

One of the souls woke up from his sleep. A cocky looking red haired boy poked his head out from between two other bodies on top of him.

"Whoa, dude, what happened? Was I smoking something again?" Nightmare silenced the boy by kicking him in the forehead with his armored heel. That got him to thinking. He felt it was not yet time to harvest the souls. Midnight would be the best because of some sort of myth or something, I dunno.

So he came up with another plan. He would lock all the victims away for the rest of the day in the castle dungeon, as they would eventually wake up anyway. Still, they would most likely use teamwork and find some way to escape. So how could he combat this problem? He thought the best way to keep them from moving at all was to chain them to each other with their heads pointed in the opposite direction of each other. This way, it would not only be difficult to move their arms around, but it would be near impossible to walk at all. If they actually succeeded in walking, the other victim chained to them would have to be dragged on his or her head, and that would be most unpleasant.

"Yeah, let's do that!" Nightmare shouted at this thought.

"Let's do what?" Tira asked, puzzled.

"Let's do that plan that I just thought up of now!"

"…Which was?"

"You know, that plan! Get to work slave!"

"Wait, what plan are you talking about?"

"I just listed the whole plan in my mind! JEEZ! Do I have to list that whole paragraph _again?_"

"We can't read each others' minds."

"You can't?"

Tira sighed, grinding her teeth. "You can't read minds either, remember?"

"Yes I can! I know that right now you're thinking about playing a game of Charades with me. You foolish mortals and your games! Fine, I'll play with you for now."

"No, I was thinking about how much of a dumbass you are right now."

After about ten minutes of this pointless conversation, Tira eventually got Nightmare to tell her the plan, which she fully accepted the task of executing. She told the plan to Cervantes, who would help as well, while Astaroth would just rampage through the castle without direction. He wouldn't have been any help either way, as he would most likely be throwing the chains and bodies around.

Nightmare just had to wait. Again. With no ipod to listen to. Sigh.

**Next Chapter: The Finale**


	28. The Finale

**Chapter 28: The Finale**

Aeon Calcos heard his name being said aloud another time. And another time. But what were the voices saying? By the Gods, how he wished to be able to understand humans again.

"Mr. Calcos? Mr. Calcos, do you remember us? We're your old neighbors, remember?" Sophitia talked across the dungeon to Aeon, who still couldn't understand. It started to drive him mad. He screeched in his lizardman voice in a pained tone, almost a howl like a wolf.

"Sis, shut the hell up!" Cassandra barked, receiving the blast of the loud howling more than anyone. "He's a _lizardman!_ He doesn't understand you! And now you're driving the poor guy nuts! GRAH! Do you even think at all anymore? I suppose that's a stupid question. You probably don't understand me either since you're just a zombie. You never have any emotions for anything anymore! Why can't you just speak to me in a normal voice like you used to? I loved you back then! Now you're completely brain dead! You can't think for yourself at all, ever! All you think about are those evil kids of yours that need to be sacrificed to Hades!"

"Seconded," Rothion held up his finger from under the chain running around his chest.

Sophitia paused. "But that would be awfully rude of Mr. Calcos not to answer me if he can hear me. Don't you agree, my sister?"

"I hate you," both Rothion and Cassandra simultaneously whispered under their breaths.

"Why did I have to be chained to this creepy old guy?" Kilik whined upon waking up at another part of the dungeon chained upside down to Voldo. "I'd prefer being chained to that gay guy I met this morning."

"Wanna trade?" muttered Xianghua from behind him with a pair of sleeping owl feet draped over her head. "At least he's not as heavy as this guy."

"Why? Who do you have? Yoshimitsu? I can't see behind Voldo's ass."

"No, it's actually some other guy. He looks like an owl." She turned her head to look at the feathers on the ground next to her.

"JUST KIDDING!" she screamed randomly. "Oh no, it's back again. JUST KIDDING!" Xianghua suffered from a mental disorder that caused her to randomly scream the words 'just kidding' at the most inappropriate times. She had taken her medication for the past few months to suppress it, but it seemed to be building an immunity to the drug. "Jus- Ju- JUST KIDDING!" She cringed.

Voldo and Olcadan both woke up. "Shut up!" they both yelled.

"I'm trying to! I swear- JUST KIDDING! Sorry, I can't contr- JUST KIDDING! I can't control it."

"Hey Hwang, are you awake?" Mina whispered to Hwang, who grunted in response, his eyes still clamped shut. Neither of them could hear over the snores of the giant they were both chained to. "Hwang, why does this guy keep talking about a bongo drum in his sleep?"

"Is that what he was saying?" Hwang responded. "I thought he was saying 'hang you,' like he was going to strangle us or something." He shrugged and continued to do nothing except hang upside down while the giant continued to snore 'Bangoo.'

Raphael stared hatefully into the face of the dog kicker. He snarled, an aura of fury engulfing his and Amy's bodies. One of those giant veins popped out of his forehead. He ignored the fact that everyone in the area was about to be sacrificed in a few moments and concentrated on loathing the evil Japanese woman across the room.

"Daddy, let me loathe her, too. You're hogging all the space," Amy coughed to her foster father in an uncomfortable upside down position.

"Just let me loathe her for five more seconds, dear…" Raphael continued to stare with his teeth gnashed. "Okay, I'm done." He pushed with his feet to pivot both their bodies around so that Amy was facing the Japanese woman so she could take over Raphael's job of staring hatefully at her.

"BUH!" Mitsurugi awoke with a fright. "Where am I?" He turned his head around and saw the flipped image of a dungeon full of mostly sleeping bodies. He tilted his head upward and saw a chain running across his chest and around his arms, then connecting with another body who was hanging upside down from his viewpoint.

"Be quiet," Taki grunted from behind him. "I'm trying to sleep so I can forget this situation. Please try your best to be a decent person and let my last moments of life be peaceful."

Taki's voice enraged Amy even more. One of those giant veins popped out of her forehead that she inherited from her foster father, if that's even possible. Meanwhile, Raphael had noticed another demon host on another side of the room. He stared hatefully into the face of the other dog kicker, snarling with another aura of fury engulfing their bodies.

Siegfried rocked back and forth, his teeth chattering and his mind fading from life. He kept hearing this annoying voice from behind him that continued to talk randomly and obnoxiously. Why would it not shut up?

"Hey man, don't think that just because the ladies like you that you're better looking than me," the voice rambled on. "I'm _so _much of a better fighter _and _ladies' man than you, that I have my own fan club, so don't get any ideas to challenge me just because you think you're good looking with your overrated hair, man." Siegfried prayed to God with all his power that the cocky red haired voice from behind him would stop and let him be, but it wouldn't cease, no matter what. Siegfried was starting to feel his suicidal tendencies return.

Yunsung was receiving another hateful gaze from further away from Raphael. Talim was basically doing the same thing Raphael was doing. Talim stared hatefully into Yunsung's face and snarled, an aura of fury engulfing her and her prison buddy's bodies. One of those giant veins popped out of her forehead. She ignored the fact that everyone in the area was about to be sacrificed in a few moments and concentrated on loathing Yunsung from across the room.

Setsuka stared hatefully into Mitsurugi's face across the room, chained to Talim upside down. She turned to look at Talim but knew that she was in the same position as her when it came to staring hatefully at someone, so she knew not to disturb her.

* * *

Nightmare looked at the clock on the wall. It was 11:50 pm. There were only ten minutes until the sacrifice, and until he would be granted ultimate power. He tapped his feet in excitement and giggled like a four-year-old boy. He figured he would wait by the dungeon staircase for the rest of the time, and it was a fairly long walk anyway, so it would be best if he left at this time. Wrapping his fingers around the hilt of Soul Edge, he descended his throne and moved down the corridor through the moonlight toward the dungeon. 

Dragging the sword against the floor, Nightmare felt another presence nearby, footsteps, to be more precise. He turned his head around but saw nothing. He grunted and resumed onward. However, he kept hearing the noise of footsteps directly behind him, but whenever he turned, they would stop, and he would see nothing. He knew he wasn't mistaking them for his own footsteps, as his own footsteps had a distinct clanging noise of armor. These footsteps sounded lighter. He checked around all the corners and still saw nothing at all. He gripped Soul Edge more tightly and walked forward. Finally, he heard the footsteps again, but they were directly above him. Before he knew it, the footsteps were on top of him, and pushing him violently against the walls and to the ground. He swung his sword around him, but it only cut through air. He roared with anger.

* * *

After escaping from the green girl, Yoshimitsu tracked Nightmare down to this castle, whose name will not be listed for fear of horribly misspelling. Tiptoeing through each hallway, he kept his eyes open for any sign of the azure knight. At about eight minutes before midnight, he saw the hulking body shuffle into his own hallway. Before he was spotted, Yoshimitsu teleported behind Nightmare and followed him to his destination. Whenever the knight turned in Yoshimitsu's direction, he would teleport behind the nearest corner before continuing his stealthy pursuit. 

When the time was right, Yoshimitsu ran up the wall and roundhouse kicked Nightmare across the helmet. The azure knight toppled into a corner and desperately swung Soul Edge around ferociously. Yoshimitsu zipped behind a corner to wait for his next offensive. As the knight rushed around to search for him, Yoshimitsu kicked forward with his right foot into Nightmare's stomach and brought down his tachi as he set his foot on the ground, slamming Nightmare to the floor on his face.

Nightmare once again swung Soul Edge in a circle as he pulled his heavy body off the ground, aiming for Yoshimitsu's shins, which he found were nonexistent. He had disappeared again. He didn't have time for this. He needed to get to the dungeon quickly. He charged full speed down the corridor, with the horn of his helmet pointed outward to impale anyone or anything that got in his way. However, once he reached the dungeon staircase, he was tripped by an almost invisible force. As his armored body rolled down the steps, Nightmare managed to stop himself by digging the thick fingers of his mutated arm into the brick wall on the way down. He charged back up, fury blazing in his crimson eyes.

When Nightmare reached the top, Yoshimitsu leapt out from behind the corner and kneed him in the ribcage. Nightmare thrust Soul Edge forward at Yoshimitsu's heart, but he vanished into thin air and reappeared behind him, delivering a swift uppercut from behind. Nightmare stumbled for a moment but quickly caught his balance. As Yoshimitsu launched himself into the air, about to slice through Nightmare from the top down, Nightmare shot his giant, three-fingered arm in his direction for a direct hit.

Nightmare clenched his fingers around his enemy and slammed him into a wall. After the rubble settled, Nightmare tossed him in the other direction, through a stained glass window. Shattered glass flew in every direction as Yoshimitsu crashed through and fell down to the water below.

Nightmare took a moment to catch his breath. Now that his opponent was taken care of, there were no more obstacles to hinder his ultimate conquest. He heard twelve bells. It was midnight. Finally. He pointed Soul Edge to the bottom of the staircase and concentrated his energy. Lightning sputtered out of the sword's eye and gradually increased in quantity as the souls in the dungeon began to escape from their bodies and connect with Soul Edge.

Nightmare laughed his evil, maniacal laugh, until he started to hear a fluttering noise behind him. Without moving his sword, he turned his head to the left and saw Yoshimitsu spinning his sword over his head and hovering in the shattered window, unharmed. He flew into the castle and hooked Nightmare's neck in between his knees. Nightmare took his smaller hand off of Soul Edge to pry his opponent away from him while still concentrating on the souls through the blinding lightning.

Yoshimitsu pulled back out the window, pulling Nightmare with him. The lightning started to fade as the azure knight's body tripped over the window. Once his entire body was outside, Yoshimitsu ascended higher into the sky until the souls were too far away from Soul Edge to be absorbed and would return to their proper bodies, and then released Nightmare from his grip, letting him plummet a hundred meters into the river.

Yoshimitsu gave a sigh of relief for this day was over. He hovered back down toward the castle dungeon where in short, he cut all the chains on the prisoners and let them find their way back to their homes. But right now, he had something that needed to be done. As the prisoners began to leave, and a small handful of them began to strangle a cocky red-haired boy, he pulled a smoke bomb from his jacket and thrust it down into the ground with an explosion of light. A shiny looking portal thingy opened in the smoke and a Chinese man in a police uniform stepped out, unexpectedly.

"Nightmare!" he shouted out the window. "This is Detective Lei Wulong of the Hong Kong police! I'm placing you under arrest for the theft of a whole bunch of souls!"

Yoshimitsu grabbed the Jackie Chan impersonator by the collar and walked through the portal. He had some business to settle with the Heihachi Mishima right now.

As the rest of the victims of Nightmare's absolutely brilliant plot left the castle, they paid little notice to what had gone on that day. Most of them knew that Namco wouldn't let their characters just die like that. Somehow, they'd find some crazy scheme to bring them all back to life, make their deaths non-canon, or save their asses at the last second. Events like this evil scheme happened all the time in Soul Calibur Land, so for the people of the Twilight Zone, this was just a day in the life.

**The End**

Well, that's the end of the story. Phew, 28 chapters. Before I end it, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed this story, especially Paladin Dragoon, who reviewed just about every chapter. I'm gonna miss writing this. I had a lot of fun with it. But, I'm also relieved to finish it, as I'm on to other things now. If anyone's interested, I'm going to be working on a Twisted Metal one-shot and either a Guilty Gear fic or another SC fic. I can't promise I'll make another story similar to this one, with every character's viewpoint, though. I just hope people will still review this one regardless of its age in the future. That's what I'll miss the most about it, reading the reviews. But whatever. I'll see you around. Bye!


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